


Magic+Silver

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Series: Night+Hunt [2]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Complete, Fae Mac, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Rape/Non-con Elements, Vampire Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-06-28 18:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 32,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15712521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: Los Angeles. July 2011. Five months into the Coven War. Phoenix agents lost: 54.Matty Webber’s vampire-hunting agency is struggling. Hunters are dying faster than they can be replaced, and the vicious underground vampire war is threatening to expose the entire supernatural community of LA. Agreeing to partner with another hunting agency was supposed to start turning this war around. It wasn’t supposed to end with her rescuing an abused, contract-bound fae, or pairing him with an agent who’s either going to be the best thing for him or the worst."Under no circumstances will the undersigned fae reveal the conditions of their situation to anyone outside the agency. Failure to follow this clause will result in punishment determined at the discretion of employing team."





	1. War+Allies

**Author's Note:**

> So here's the prequel to "Fangs+Bloodlust" that quite a few of my readers were hoping to see! Hope you like it!  
> First chapter is a little short, but hopefully it's a good intro to the action.

Matty Webber prides herself on running an efficient, effective agency. The Phoenix is known for its highly-trained hunting teams, vigilant surveillance, and effective takedowns of rogue vampires or entire covens gone bad.

Matty has seen plenty in her near-twenty years with the agency. She’s seen her first team splinter when one hunter was turned, and the other blamed himself for it. She’s seen good people go insane from this job, unable to take the strain.

But the Coven Wars have put all that into the hazy past of what Matty is actually, to her horror, starting to call “the good old days.” Now they’re hanging at least one lantern at the Fire Tree almost every night. Hunters are dying faster than they can be trained.

All of which has brought Matty to her current situation. She’s sitting in the Phoenix War Room, listening to the head of a longtime rival hunting agency, the Silver Blade, explaining exactly why she needs to join forces.

“L.A. is becoming a war zone. The humans are getting suspicious. How long before the entire nightlife community is exposed?” Director Jamison asks.

“With all due respect, Director, it isn't L.A.’s best kept secret.” The city nightlife is famous on the darknet, and L.A. attracts a lot of vamp groupies and wannabes.  Still, most of the general public thinks it's hoaxes and serial killers, which is how everyone in the hunting business would prefer that it stay.

If more people knew about the existence of real vampires, there would be a flood of totally untrained and unqualified people out in the streets with silver and stakes. Those hunters would get themselves killed, or equally as likely, attack innocent vampires who are avoiding human blood consumption.

Jamison is still talking. “Your agency has proven to have a command of tactical planning and optimal success rates.”

Matty nods. It’s only courtesy that keeps her from saying, ‘which is something yours is severely lacking.’

Jamison continues. “I’m offering you command of three of my teams; my agency will train recruits, yours will coordinate the hunt effort. Each of our teams are five-man groups. Bravo and Gamma teams are all entirely composed of humans. But one of the members of Alpha is one-quarter fae.”

Matty forces her face to remain impassive. Fae are rare in the world now, even rarer to find in the hunting business. After the great wars between them and the vampires centuries ago, they’ve for the most part retreated to hidden colonies around the world.

Jamison hands her the dossier. “I’d heard that the Phoenix had a policy against employing fae, but I wanted you to consider this before you reject my offer.”

Matty knows the policy, but not the reasons. It was already in effect when she took the position of Director, an order handed down by the shadowy guidance of Oversight. When she was starting out as a hunter, she’s not sure it was a rule, but they never had any fae anyway.

She opens the file. The picture clipped to the front of it seems wrong; the boy there looks too young to be doing anything but finishing high school. Still, fae’s looks can be deceiving; they don’t show their age. The dossier claims he’s twenty.

In bold type at the top the file reads: **Seelie Given Name: Angus**. It's the only identification besides his Fae Registry number. Matty’s knowledge of fae lore is rusty, but there is something she clearly remembers from her days at the hunter academy. Fae, and their descendants down to anyone one-sixteenth, are susceptible to control by anyone who knows their true name and can speak commands in the Seelie tongue. She wonders, briefly, why the rest of his name isn't listed. But she's never worked with fae before, maybe this is protocol.

“He’s an incredibly valuable asset. His skills at field improvisation are...well, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I don’t really like to operate on ‘improvisation’, Director. I'm not sure how your agency does it, but here, we prefer planning and preparation.”

“Even the best plans can fall apart in the field. And he’s never failed to get out of a tight spot yet.” Jamison smiles. 

“I thought as much, seeing as you’re telling me he’s part of one of the teams.” Matty’s none too impressed with Jamison. He’s too flighty, treating this war like a game or a training exercise. A chance to show off the toys he has to play with, or the skills his teams reportedly have.

If the Silver Blade wasn’t the only hunter agency besides the Phoenix operating in L.A., she’d go anywhere else. Anywhere. She’s actually considering calling in the favors she’s owed in Portland or Houston.

“Let me confer with my people and see if they’re on board.” She nods Jamison out, then flicks the windows of the War Room frosted.

She didn’t want Jamison to know that she’s not the one with the final authority on whether or not they agree to this deal. He needs to think he’s dealing with the decision maker or she won’t be able to negotiate effectively.

She presses her thumb against the communication screen and then dials a number she’s committed to memory, a number no one will find anywhere in the agency directories.

“Good morning, Matilda.” Oversight’s voice is unmistakable, and so is his attitude. He's at his desk, in the office that won't show up on any building blueprints, turned with his back to the wall screen. She can see only the back of his head, the greying blond curls a familiar sight. If she sees his face on these calls something is very, very important. Matters of life and death are the only thing that warrant the secretive agent's actual full attention. Right now, she can see that he's got three dossiers laid on his desk, and he's flicking through a police report that carries all the marks of a vamp kill. She knows, she sent it.

“I’ve met with the Silver Blade director. He’s offered to loan three teams and train agents on site.” Since the academy was breached three weeks ago, that’s the part of the deal she’s most concerned about securing; she doesn’t really want to send trainees (and more importantly the senior hunters needed to train them) too far away, in case they need backup fast. And it’s not like you can train vampire hunters in any old warehouse conversion in L.A.

“We’ve discussed this before. If the offer stands, accept it.” Oversight’s voice is crisp. He's frustrated, and she understands why. This was supposed to be solely her call to make. But with the new complications,  she’s not making a move without approval.

Matty isn't one to beat around the bush. “One of the teams has a fae on it.”

“Fae?” She's gotten Oversight’s attention now. The usually calm, stiff voice has an actual feel of both curiosity and annoyance. He's half-turned in his seat, police report abandoned.

“Only a quarter-blooded, but that still falls within the Phoenix’s non-employment policy.”

“Would this deal put us in direct responsibility for those teams?”

“In field situations, yes.” Matty flicks through the pages of the agreement she’s drawn up. “We would have direct command.”

Oversight sighs. “I would prefer to have no dealings whatever with the fae, and no connection to them. But this is a war, and if we’re going to win it we may be forced to compromise. Don’t make any promises until you see if it’s worth going in with them, though.”

Matty considers their options. “If the fae is the only problem, I may be able to convince Jamison to switch out his teams.” But that’s going to be a hard sell. Hunter teams are close-knit. Removing one member can ruin the entire dynamic.

“See what we’re getting. If it’s worth it, see what you can do to ensure that we’re not responsible for anything to do with the fae. I don’t want their actions reflecting back on us if something goes wrong.”

Matty’s never fully agreed with Oversight’s perception of the fae as opportunistic, selfish tricksters. They’re just trying to survive in a world that has mostly turned against them. But then again, if this one does turn out to be a problem, they don’t need a PR firestorm on their hands while they’re fighting a war.

“I’ll ask to see the fae’s team on a field operation before I make a final decision.” Matty hangs up. She defrosts the glass and calls Jamison back inside.

“I want to see this Alpha team, and your fae hunter, in action before I make any decision.” She hands him her paperwork. “If I like what I see, I’ll be asking for that filled out and returned to me.”

“They won’t disappoint.” Jamison picks up the folder with an unreadable look. “I’ll make sure of that.”


	2. Cobwebs+Garlic Powder

Matty can’t help the judgment in her head when she parks at the Silver Blade’s main agency offices. Compared to the Phoenix, this place is a dump. The building likely hasn’t been renovated since the ‘70s, and the blocky white walls are streaked with sickly black and green from rain and mold.

The interior doesn't inspire much more confidence.  Tacky office furniture, a wall color that's got just a bit too much green to be beige, and she has yet to see anything approaching acceptable professional dress, even on the department head who shows her to the conference room. She understands that hunters seem to have a unique sense of style, but some things just should not be combined. Leather jackets and Hawaiian shirts are currently at the top of that list.

The team waiting for her in the conference room at least appears organized. The four human agents are all dressed for field missions, black leather gear and sturdy boots, with full tactical gear and extra stakes laid out on the table. It looks like no one was planning on giving her a tour before she saw the team at work; these people are prepping to pull out.

A stiff-backed, grey-eyed agent shakes her hand. “I’m senior hunter Kevin Michaels. Leader of Alpha team.”

He introduces his team; a burly bald guy, Agent Jenkins, who’s apparently their tech specialist, a short brunette woman, Agent Riverdon, the sharpshooter, and Agent Francis, a young man with a bushy goatee who handles interrogations. And then there’s Angus, the fae.

Angus looks even younger in person. Matty can barely believe anyone in their right mind put this kid in the field. He looks all of fifteen in person, with messy blond hair that’s constantly falling into wide blue eyes, and even though he must be field-trained, he seems uncertain and nervous.

Matty reminds herself that fae’s looks are deceiving. Or at least, that’s what she’s been told. She tries not to let anything she thinks she knows get in the way of making the best tactical decision for the Phoenix. If the boy’s as good as Jamison claims, she might need to overlook a few things.

So far, though, she’s distinctly unimpressed. The fae is shaky, constantly glancing at everyone and everything like it’s going to attack him. His clothes, unlike the others’ black tac gear, are normal civilian wear, a white button-down and khaki pants, not even an fang-proof vest or neck guard _._ He’s got a beat-up canvas messenger bag slung over his shoulder, and that looks like the extent of the gear he's packing.

Michaels calls her over to the table, where he's spread out a series of papers.

“Call’s a rogue coven in a little suburban dump called Red Rock, outside San Francisco. We’ll set up a command center at the Bridgeview Hotel, here,” he taps one finger on the map on the table. “Local rumors have it the vamps are using an abandoned theater as a hideout, but there’ve also been reports of them in a boarded-up restaurant.”

“Sounds like a straightforward operation. Reported kills?” Matty asks.

Michaels consults the papers. “Ten. Three are confirmed, others are likely. Most of the victims’ bodies were destroyed after the kill, but a couple were still intact enough to find trace saliva.”

Francis speaks up. “The kills follow a pattern. Based on level of decay between body dumps, and the dates of missing persons reports, they kill every five days. And there's due to be another attack tomorrow night.”

“If you're ready, we'll roll out. Sooner we get there the faster we can wrap this up.” Michaels collects the intel and his gear, and Matty leaves to grab her own field pack from the car. It's been a long time since she was on a hunt, but every piece of equipment is still ingrained in her muscle memory.

Matty sits next to Angus in the van on the way to San Francisco. It’s the only seat open. The fae seems determined to ignore her, pulling endless numbers of paperclips out of his bag and retwisting them into everything from stars to birds in flight. It’s getting on Matty’s nerves.

“Do you mind?” she nudges his shoulder. She’s getting carsick enough in this pile of junk without constantly watching him fidget.

“Angus, _Sheshla_.” Riverdon snaps. He stops immediately, dropping a half-finished image of the Golden Gate Bridge to the floor of the van and folding his hands in his lap. The van is quiet the rest of the way to Red Rock.

The hotel they’re using is as dumpy as the offices. Grimy, dusty, with half the lightbulbs out. Matty has her own small room. The others are sharing a suite. The suite is their command center, papers spread all over one of the beds’ stained coverlets.

Michaels points out the access points to the building they’re planning on breaching. “We’re going to hit the theater just before dusk. We’ll be in position to take them down as soon as they’re mobile.” There are a few hard and fast rules hunters follow. One of them is that vampires can’t be killed or captured during daylight hours; any attack can only commence at sundown. It’s an unfair advantage, like shooting an unarmed man, because vampires are sluggish and disoriented during the daylight hours, unable to fight back. Sometimes that’s a hard rule to follow, but breaking it means losing your chance to ever work at a reputable agency again.

The theater building is silent and still when they enter. Michaels takes lead, clearing the foyer, the lobby area, then moving toward the balcony seating, leaving the doors open to allow sunlight from the lobby windows to shine in. It’s a myth that vampires hang from the ceilings, but they do prefer to rest in high places.

It isn’t until Michaels’s foot comes down on a loose board that they realize they’ve been had. Suddenly, the whole stairway is collapsing. Angus and Jenkins, who were bringing up the rear, barely make it to the solid boards of the balcony before the whole staircase crashes to the ground.

“Oh hell no! It was a trap!” Michaels snaps, quietly. They’re now stuck here in the balcony, where the vampires, with their climbing skills, are capable of reaching them easily, but they themselves will be unable to escape. The wall of the balcony slants so sharply inward that if anyone tried to climb down over the railing, the only escape is a thirty-foot drop to the floor.

“You better work fast.” Michaels is looking at Angus. The fae is already in motion, searching the area for something, Matty has no idea what.

“Curtains?” Francis suggests.

“No, they’ve dry rotted. Wouldn’t hold our weight.” Angus climbs onto a chair and runs his hand over the ceiling, where large gaps have appeared in the plaster, then grabs something and pulls. “Wiring for the house lights will though.” A thick cable is pulling free in his hand. Then a massive light fixture in the middle of the room wobbles, shaking back and forth violently as if it’s possessed. He continues tugging the wiring, and suddenly the entire set of lights plummets with a crash. Now the cable is hanging taut over the balcony railing.

The team descends as fast as possible, none of them trusting the makeshift rope to hold for long. Still, Matty has to admit that was a fairly impressive piece of work. The fae is smart.

He’s also the last one to come down the cable. Even in the dim light, Matty thinks he looks worried. He’s avoiding really looking down at them all, and his hands are shaking as he climbs down far more slowly than any of the rest of them. _Fear of heights possibly?_ He’s nearly made it to the ground when Riverdon shouts a warning.

“Sundown!” The faint light through the windows is gone. Angus flinches and loses his grip on the cable, which was already slick with sweat from the previous climbers. He’s only about six feet off the ground now, but directly below him is what remains of a row of seats, and Matty can see rough, rusted metal.

Angus jumps sideways, but not quite far enough. The edge of one of the chairs catches his leg, cutting a gash across it that immediately begins to bleed.

“Run!” Matty shouts. There’s fresh blood in the air now, and if the vamps weren’t already pissed about intruders, this will have them coming in for the kill. Everyone already knows, they’re moving as a group toward the backstage area. More secure places to hide. Francis shoves open the first door them come to, and once they’re all inside Matty and Michaels shove a chair up against it. It won’t hold forever but it buys them some time.

The dressing room is pitch black, and it wouldn't be so bad if there weren't wigs and costumes randomly lying about. Matty pulls out her red light and turns it on. The colored filter keeps her night vision mostly intact. The other hunters seem jealous, they must not have that kind of tech. Normal light can’t be used because it will draw the vamps down on them immediately and also leave them fighting blind when it goes out.

In the light, Angus leans over to look at his leg, and Matty hears him hiss softly when he touches the area around the still-bleeding wound. Riverdon sees it too. “Get that covered! We don’t need them homing in on that blood scent!”

Angus grabs a handful of the cobwebs that are covering everything, including Matty’s face, and presses them against his leg. He uses a few more layers, until the red stops showing through, then pulls a small jar out of his knapsack and shakes the powder in it onto the makeshift bandage. Matty’s nose twitches, now the place smells like an Italian restaurant. _Garlic. It must overpower the blood scent._ Every hunter knows garlic is a strong vamp deterrent, but Matty’s never heard of using it on wounds. _If it works, I’m not complaining._

“Now find us a way out.” Matty frowns at Michaels’s tone. It’s like he totally relies on Angus to clean up any mess he gets his team into. He’s a bit reckless, and apparently he trusts the fae to fix his mistakes. Not the best way to run an op.

“This theater is built directly on top of a set of old mine shafts from a failed gold prospect, and in the 1920s it was a bootlegging hotspot. They smuggled the alcohol through the tunnels, then hid it in prop rooms disguising it as fake bottles for shows.” Angus is working his way through the crowded room to a small door in the back. “If no one’s boarded them up, the tunnel access points should still be here.” He opens the door, and Matty’s light reveals a gaping black hole in the floor.

“How did you know that?” Matty asks Angus as they stumble along the rough floor of the mine tunnel. He doesn’t so much as look at her. Then Jenkins, walking next to them, gives him a small nod, and he half-turns toward her.

“Briefings.” Matty remembers that packet; it was thick. She only skimmed it.

When they reach a boarded-up entrance, which it only takes the team a few minutes to break through, they’ve come out on the opposite side of town, in a small park. Michaels hotwires a park maintenance truck, and he and Riverdon climb in. The others sit in the back, leaning against the sides of the truck as they drive away.

Matty pulls her first aid kit out of her field pack. The cobwebs and garlic powder were, admittedly, a very good temporary solution, but the inside of that building was filthy. Angus needs to get that wound cleaned and treated soon.

When she opens the first aid kit and reaches for his leg, he moves away. “No, I'm okay, I am. I’ll take care of it.”

“No, here, let me.” She pulls out some cleaning cloths and a roll of bandages. “Your hands are still shaky.” They are, even though they’re clenched in his lap. It’s odd, because he wasn’t this nervous when they were in the middle of the mission. Something about his team puts him more on edge than imminent danger of death.

No one else speaks up, but there’s a thick tension in the air in the pickup bed. She reaches for Angus’s leg again, and he closes his eyes and drops his head. Matty wonders why none of his own team are already doing this.

Something about this situation screams wrongness to her. Actually, a lot of things. She can’t miss the way the team members look at Angus, like he’s their property. He’s more like a tool to them than a person. _But again, not my call to make. This isn’t my agency, and it isn’t my team. Yet._ She finishes cleaning and wrapping his leg, and sits back, looking up at the stars.

When they get back to the hotel, Matty is exhausted, even though it’s still a few hours until dawn. _I must have been out of the field a little too long. Good think Jack wasn’t here._ He would never have let her hear the end of it.

She really wants caffeine and sugar; she’s about to fall asleep and she still has to write up her briefing from the night and start an action report and a case statement for partnering with Silver Blade. She thinks there was a vending machine down the hall, although with the way this dump is run, it's likely to be out of order, empty, or one of those truly exasperating ones that things get stuck in after you've paid for them.

It _is_ a piece of junk, and the only thing left is bottles of flat coke, but at least they don’t get stuck. Matty is passing the others’ suite on the way back to her room when she hears it. Voices, and loud ones. She can’t help her curiosity. The sound is loud enough to carry into the hall. Not that that's impressive with such thin walls and doors.

Michaels’s voice. “You’re not to speak to them. Only to us.” There’s a sharp cracking sound, like someone’s been hit.

“And it was your blood that was drawing them in. Do you want me to remind you what happens when you put us in danger?” Riverdon. There’s another smack, but the sound is duller.

Matty cringes. She’s not entirely sure what’s happening, but they can only be talking to Angus. She turns back from the door and walks into her own room, suddenly not wanting anything to drink but something stiff.

This still isn’t her place to intervene, but nothing in that room sounded good.


	3. Search+Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a Mac POV and gives a little of his backstory.

Everything hurts and Angus can't sleep. The suite the team is staying in is too small to fit a couch in; it barely fits the two twin beds in each room. And those are for the humans. 

Usually he doesn't have a problem sleeping on the floor, but today his leg is throbbing and his whole body hurts.  His leg isn't as bad as it could be, though. He's worked on worse. A lot worse.

He still wishes the new hunter wouldn't have tried to help. She didn't know she shouldn't,  and it's not her fault. He tried to warn her. But her agency doesn't work with fae, so she didn’t understand.  He wonders what she would think of him of she knew the truth.

The truth makes him sound like a scared, desperate child who can’t handle the real world. Because that's what he is. He's not going to make it if someone isn't there to make sure he does what he's supposed to. He can't make it on his own.

The truth is, he's here because he was so desperate to find the only family he has left that he was willing to do anything. Even sign on for something he knew could go badly wrong.

His family is basically non-existent now. Mom died when he was six, she had something the doctors claimed was cancer but Grandfather said was a fae disease. Mom had refused to go back to the fae to be healed, because if she had she would have been bound to stay with that colony forever, never to return to the human world or her family. Instead, she chose a slow, lingering death, plagued by doctors who couldn’t help her and treatments that couldn’t cure her. Angus barely remembers her when she wasn’t thin and pale and weak in the hospital. What few things he has from before that are memories connected to small things. 

Like the flowers she kept in every room in the house that are still alive in pots on the windowsill in his house (if Bozer hasn’t forgotten to water them, Angus hasn’t been able to go home much lately with the war as bad as it is). Or the butterfly wing he found one day that reminded him of the way she used to have them floating around her head whenever she went outside.

His father, James, was a hunter. Well, until he disappeared. On Angus’s tenth birthday, he just never came back from a hunt. He had promised to be there, even though the party was in the actual daytime when hunters normally slept, but then morning came, and he wasn’t home, and then afternoon, and then the next night. Angus doesn’t know what happened; no one does. More likely than not he was turned, but no one’s ever seen him as a vampire either. 

After that he lived with Grandfather. Grandfather taught him more about what it meant to be fae; his father had raised him as a human. From Grandfather, Angus learned to harness his magic, to ask favors from the world around him, and coax even the shyest animals into his hands. Grandfather had left his fae colony after his daughter died, angry with the fae for not compromising and letting Angus’s mother be healed without leaving her family. He and Angus lived by themselves in Grandfather’s old house, built around a Rowan tree that Grandfather’s grandmother had planted. 

But because they were no longer connected to the colony, Grandfather was the only other fae Angus knew. All his friends were human. And as much as he loved learning about the fae from Grandfather, he felt more like he belonged in the human world. Even if it didn’t always want to accept him. So when he was old enough, he decided that rather than swear allegiance to a colony and be trained in healing or herbalism or “cunning”, the fae magic, he would do what the humans did and attend a college, get a job, and live in their world.

For a while, it was good. He had friends at MIT, he was smart and on the fast track to a good degree and a good job, and best of all no one knew what he really was. No one asked, no one cared. He didn’t give anyone his real name; even his professors always used his nickname, Mac. He’d been able to get away with it by saying he hated the old-fashioned family name his parents picked, and everyone believed it, except maybe that one social studies prof. Most people didn’t question why someone wouldn’t want to go by the same name as a breed of cow. 

It felt good to be normal. Mac had heard a lot from his mom’s side of the family about how hiding they were fae felt wrong, but as long as he had his weekends to go camping with his friends or even just mornings to go run trails around the area, he didn’t really care. He never felt like people had to know he was fae in order to know  _ him. _

When he got the call that Grandfather had died, he’d changed his mind. He just couldn't go the rest of his life with yet another hole where someone he relied on used to be. His dad was the only blood family he had left, and no matter what, Angus was determined to find him.

When he decided to become a hunter, he was hoping for some chance, however slim, of meeting someone who knew his dad. Someone who worked with him. Maybe even someone who knows what happened.

Some days he wonders what will happen if Dad  _ was _ turned. If they come face to face on a hunt.  _ Would I be able to kill him if I had to? _ He doesn’t know the answer to that, and he hopes he never has to find out.

The last agency his father had worked with was the Phoenix, but they had a strict policy against fae hunters, and he was sure they'd find out if he lied; they had too much paperwork and background requirements for him to fake his way through. So he went to his father's previous agency, the Silver Blade. Less prestigious but also much less likely to dig too deeply into the background of someone volunteering to join.

They seemed thrilled to have him. They talked about James MacGyver like he was some kind of legend and said they'd be lucky to have his son working for them. They said they’d be willing to train him, even though they didn’t normally take hunters who hadn’t gone to a training academy, because they could expect good things from him. They promised to try to help him track down his dad’s last whereabouts and see if he could be found.

Angus wasn't a complete fool; he didn't tell them he was fae. The fewer people who knew his secrets, the better off he was. He'd heard enough of Grandfather's stories to be wary. And no one ever asked. He thought things were going well, he hadn't even had to lie. 

It all sounded almost too good to be true. Four months of training, and then probational field assignments with an active team. And agency resources and information available for him to search for his father if they didn’t have a seriously pressing emergency. 

When he signed the employment papers, he used his full name, a tiny, tiny mistake. He’d let his guard down just a little, because people were being kind, and they seemed to like him. He’d thought he was trusted, that he was accepted.. And then everything changed.

His dad must have told someone that he'd married a fae. Because the minute the agency got Angus's name, he was theirs. There was no more kindness, no more fake smiles. Just orders and hunger and exhaustion and pain. He has no idea how many scars he’s acquired over the past months, how often he’s been sent to the infirmary only when a fever makes him pass out or an infection gets so bad he’s delirious. And then, he’s sent back to the field as soon as he’s able to stand. 

Even that, he could bear. His whole life, he’s been faking that he’s okay. Mom died?  _ Keep your chin up. She wouldn’t have wanted you to stop living just because she’s gone.  _ Dad left? _ He must have had his reasons. He’ll come back someday. Just make sure you keep making him proud, okay?  _ Grandfather died? _ Sorry, son, but if you leave for the funeral now, you’ll miss final exams. I can’t make exceptions for you, you understand? _ Pretending the cuts and bruises and hunger don’t affect him is easy. All of that hurts less than his heart. 

When he first joined Alpha team, he felt like he finally belonged somewhere.  _ It was what I was born to do. The fae are supposed to hold back the darkness, and Dad was a hunter.  _ And he was good at it, he was one of them. They worked together, fought together, bled together. Yes, he was new, he was the one everyone pranked, the butt of everyone’s jokes, but it was just what everyone did to the new recruits. They’d said so; it must have happened to all of them at some point. And nothing they did ever really  _ hurt _ him, it was just in good fun. 

Sure, he almost got pneumonia when they locked him out of the motel room one night and he couldn’t find the manager, and it took days to get the taste out of his mouth when they filled all the water bottles in the van with vinegar (he guesses they didn’t know how awfully anything very acidic affects fae, because they were all upset that he couldn't stop throwing up for three hours), but they meant it to be funny and he just had to learn not to take life so seriously.   

And then they started loaning him out. He was good at that too, and as long as it helped them catch vampires, he didn’t see how he could complain.  _ “If you don’t do this, we’re never going to find that rogue and a lot of people are going to die. We need what he knows. Now just do your job, Angus _ . _ ” _ He doesn’t know how many times he’s stumbled backto wherever it is they’re staying just as night’s falling, exhausted and sore, and then had to get ready to leave in less than an hour to get the vamp he’s just found out how to catch.  _ “Get it together. We’ve all got to do whatever it takes. Sometime it’s just a miserable job. But in the end, we rid the world of a few more of those miserable bastards, and it’s worth it.”  _

He thought he was doing something good, helping people. It was worth falling apart if it meant at the end of the day he saved lives. That’s what being a hunter was all about, wasn’t it? Being the one who put yourself in harm’s way to protect people from the things they didn’t even know existed.

And then he started seeing the cracks. The kills that weren’t justified. Innocent vamps and humans getting caught in someone else’s thirst for justice or vengeance or some combination of the two. He’s seen Michaels murder a vampire woman in cold blood because she came from a coven whose former leader killed one of their agents. He’s seen Riverdon shoot even when the vamp is holding a human hostage. There’s no concern over collateral damage. The others, they seem more decent, but he watches the bloodlust in their eyes in a fight and it’s no better than the vampires. 

It was never supposed to get this bad. He could live with anything else, but not this. As long as he was doing the right thing, helping people, he didn’t care what happened to him. But now...

He wonders if the Phoenix will be any different if they decide to join with the Silver Blade. If his team works for them, would that woman...Webber... change anything? They said she was a Director, like Jamison, so she’d be able to make sure the teams didn’t break rules or hurt anyone they shouldn’t. She seems like the kind of person who wouldn’t let anyone get away with doing something wrong. A good person. 

And he isn’t, not anymore. He tried, but when they have his name it’s no use. He hasn’t just watched the others kill innocent vamps, he’s watched himself do it. There’s blood on his hands now, just like theirs. He’s in this as deep as everyone else, and he wants out. They can punish him just the same as they will the rest of his team. He doesn’t care. He just doesn’t want to have to kill again. 

He wants to trust Webber, tell her what the team is doing, that she needs to do something, but no one can help him. Everyone leaves. And when she does, he’s going to be in even worse trouble than before.


	4. Whistle+Belt

In the evening, Michaels calls the team together for a briefing. They need to make a move before nightfall, or someone else in town is going to die. 

Michaels seems confident enough in his plan. But after last night, that’s not as much of a reassurance as it should be. “Well, they won’t be going back to that theater. So it looks like our only option is to hit the restaurant they’ve been using before they pull out of there too. The only good thing is that that was their backup lair, and they haven’t had to resort to using it in some time. So they still think it’s a secret.”

Angus won’t look at Matty the entire time. She can't see any visible bruises other than the ones he picked up on the op, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been hurt.

Riverdon slips an extra clip of silver bullets into her belt. “This time, we’ll all need to be watching everything. These vamps have proven that they’re smart. And that they expect company. So let’s make sure we surprise them.” 

It’s pouring rain outside, so bad that Matty can barely see the van where it’s parked at the street. She wonders who retrieved it from the theater. Even with their leather hunting coats, everyone is uncomfortably damp by the time they climb in. Angus, without a jacket, is shivering. Yesterday, Matty would have wondered why a supposedly very valuable asset was being treated so carelessly. After what she heard this morning, though, she’s not surprised. 

_ Does Jamison know about this? _ He’d seemed very enthusiastic about Angus and talked about him like he was a very, very important part of the team. She wonders if he’ll do anything about this situation if she reports it to him. Because watching Angus huddle up in his seat, wrapping his arms around his knees for warmth and trying to brush the most of the water out of his hair, is heartbreaking. 

She’d like to give him her jacket, but she’s afraid, with the way they treated him when he let her help with his leg, that she’ll only be getting him in more trouble. She sits as close to him as he’ll let her get, hoping some warmth might spread over to him. It’s all she can do.

They park over a block away from the restaurant to avoid raising suspicion. It’s a good plan, but it does require walking even farther through the storm. Matty doesn’t think the rain has slowed at all. If anything, it’s gotten heavier and colder. The abandoned restaurant really does look like something out of a bad horror film when they get closer.

Michaels leads them around the back. “Weather’s going to make the place dark earlier. We have less time to get set up and in position. So everyone move fast. We can’t afford mistakes.” He stops outside a door marked “staff only” in fading white paint. “We’ll go in through the kitchen. Fae boy can probably find us something we can use.”

The inside of the building is dim and chilly. Angus begins looking through the cupboards and drawers as soon as they’re inside. He drags a large sack of flour from under a counter and some towels from a drawer by the sink.

He’s whispering the entire time he’s working. “They’re not stupid. They’ve thrown away anything that was real silver. But the flour...I might be able to make a big enough explosion to disorient them.” He spreads the towels out and begins shaking flour into them. “Everyone should take two of these. You’ll have to shake them out hard when we get into the main room, hard enough to get a lot of the dust in the air.” 

Michaels nods. Matty wonders if this is pretty normal for them. Maybe they’ve done this before, and the fae is explaining for her benefit, so the plan goes smoothly.

“I’ll need a lighter. Or one of the pilot lights from the stove.”

Matty starts digging through drawers as well. This she can help with. 

“Found one.” Francis holds out a large industrial lighter, carefully closing a drawer below the stove.

Angus is turning to take the lighter from Francis when his foot hits a damp patch of the tile, where someone’s coat dripped. He slips, stumbles, then tries to catch himself. Unfortunately, his hand doesn’t hit the wall. He grabs onto a section of the metal shelving that holds large mixing bowls and baking pans. It’s wobbly, already overloaded with heavy equipment, and the sideways pull is enough to bring it down.

The clatter is deafening in the silent room. Everyone turns to stare at Angus, who is half-sitting, half-lying, in the collapsed shelving. Despite his obvious fear, Matty thinks he looks a few steps shy of falling asleep.

_ He’s exhausted. And I haven’t seen him eat since...since we started this mission.  _

“They’re coming!” One of the team members, Francis she thinks, cocks his gun. “They’re awake!”

There’s the distinctive swish of vamp movement, and Matty knows this isn’t the time to worry about Angus. If she doesn’t focus on this fight they will _ all _ be dead.

The vamps scurry in, practically running sideways on the walls. Their top speed is over four times that of a normal human, and they move like dark blurs. Matty pushes herself as far as she can into a gap between a stove and countertop. Vamps like to take hunters out one by one, rushing in and snatching them. If she’s protected on three sides, she stands a better chance.

The others are doing something similar, except Angus who seems too panicked to move. One of the blurs is almost on top of him.

“Hey!” Matty shouts, darting forward just a little. It’s risky, to attract their attention like that, but she doesn’t want them to hurt the fae. He’s not even fighting back. 

Two of the vamps turn and lunge toward her. Matty nearly empties her clip in their general direction, and she sees both hit the floor. 

There are still at least five in the room, and the others seem to have decided Matty is too dangerous to be worth going after. Another one is reaching for Angus. Matty shouts again, but there’s no response. She braces her arm to shoot, but it’s all the way across the room and it’s dark and if she misses she could hurt Angus, and then the blood in the air would drive all the vamps insane. 

The vamp grabs the boy’s arm, then  _ screams, _ pulling back and clutching its hand, something that looks like steam rising from its fingers, like it’s been met with silver or light or both. It’s moved just enough. Matty puts her last three bullets in its back, and it collapses, limply, almost on top of Angus. 

There’s a high-pitched screech, which Matty is only aware of because it’s detected by her comms. Vampires’ communication with each other is too high-frequency for the human ear to notice. The warbling notes mean nothing to Matty, but they certainly do to the vamps. The two still alive rush back the way they came and disappear.

“Think we drove them off.” Riverdon is holstering her gun. “Who knows where they’ve run to. But hopefully they’re too rattled to make a kill.”

“They almost had us. Why did they…” Jenkins stops and looks at Angus. Matty follows his glance. 

The fae is holding a piece of the hollow metal tubing from the shelves, with a tiny hole bored into it. His left hand is clenched, white-knuckled, around it. His right is holding a Swiss Army Knife with one of the blades extended in the same tight grip.

Now Matty understands why he wasn’t moving from that spot. He was trying to do something to save them all, and he needed the parts of that shelving to do it.

“What did you tell them?” Riverdon shouts.

“Just ‘need to go’. It’s simple and I couldn’t get it wrong.” He stands up shakily, slipping the small piece of metal into his bag. “I don’t know where they went.”

“We’ll need to start trying to track their movements.” Jenkins is pulling out his computer, getting ready to input some tracking algorithms and predict likely movement. 

“Do it at the van.” Michaels snaps. “I need your help with something first.” He’s staring directly at Angus, who has his head down, hands nervously twisting the strap of his messenger bag. “I’m sorry about the way our asset compromised the situation. I’ll take care of this, Director Webber.” Michaels nods her away. “I promise you, something like this won’t happen again.” He’s glaring at Angus with something primally vindictive in his face. “You may as well go wait at the van.”

She knows what happens next will be ugly. She doesn’t have any authority to stop it; this isn’t her team, and Angus isn’t her asset. The diplomatic thing would be to turn her back, let the chips fall where they will, and pretend nothing is wrong. 

Because legally, nothing is. The Fae Codes allow anyone who’s contractually bound a fae to have almost total control of them. Anything short of murder will probably never see the inside of a courtroom. It’s almost a blanket assumption that fae are dangerous tricksters and that drastic means are needed to keep them under control. 

But Matty doesn’t need to be diplomatic anymore, she tells herself as the door closes behind her and her steps slow down, feeling like she’s wading in molasses compared to the way her mind is racing. She already knows she doesn’t want a thing to do with this agency, or its teams. People like Michaels don’t belong in the field at all, much less working under her agency’s name. She doesn’t need to stay in anyone’s good graces now. And she doesn’t need to listen to Michaels. She turns back to the door. 

The Silver Blade’s team is still standing in the kitchen. The four agents are surrounding Angus, who’s standing quietly in the middle with his head down. Not panicking or fighting to get out. He looks calm, but Matty can see that his hands are shaking. 

“My foot slipped, the floor was damp, it was just an accident…”

Michaels breaks the circle, stepping in to grab the fae by the collar of his shirt and force him to his knees. “You almost got us all killed! You probably ruined any chance we have of getting a contract with the Phoenix after their agent saw you screw up, and Jamison is  _ not _ going to be happy about it. And then you have the nerve to try and make excuses for your messes? This was your fault. If anyone had gotten hurt it would be on you!” 

“I'm sorry.” Angus looks down, hands visibly trembling. “I shouldn't have said anything.”

“You're right, and I'm going to make sure you don't forget that next time.” Michaels whips out his tac belt and coils it around his fist, moving rapidly like this is almost muscle memory. “I've had enough of your stupid, clumsy mistakes.” Matty watches in shock and horror as he brings the buckle down on the boy's back.

Angus’s white shirt is instantly stained red. He doesn't make a sound, simply collapsing under the strike.

Matty expected anger, maybe even violence.  But this brutality is so shocking that for a moment she can't do a thing. The leader brings down the buckle again. And again. Angus grunts softly, and the bloodstain grows larger.

“Stop!” Matty shoves the door open and grabs the man’s arm, flinching when blood from the buckle spatters on her hands. She knows he’ll probably just ignore her; she was only here as an observer. But if he tries to hurt this boy again, she’ll show him how she earned her nickname “Matty the Hun.” 

Michaels glares at her, but he stops with his arm half raised. “Let go of me.”

“I will when you stop this.” Everyone in the team is staring now.

“He almost got this entire team killed. Do you suggest I just forget about it?”

“This is too much.” She can't imagine any agency letting their people do this. It's not just wantonly cruel, it's bad for the job, and definitely for PR. But maybe she's been in charge too long to remember not everyone thinks like her. “Does Jamison know this is how you treat your asset?”

She wants to beat Michaels to a bloody pulp, but she can’t afford to sink to his level. And there’s a lot more of his people than she really wants to tangle with at once. If she can, she’s going to keep this civil on her part. 

“As long as the job gets done, Jamison doesn't give a damn. Besides, it's just a fae. What does it matter?”

“This isn’t right.”

“You’ve got no authority here, Webber. He's bound under contract, it’s well within our rights.” Riverdon shrugs and kicks her boot into the boy’s side. Angus curls up against the fresh pain, still soundless.

“Don’t quote the Fae Codes to me. I know all that. But this isn't the time for this. We still have half a coven to track. We can't afford to be a man down or to have this much blood in the air.” Matty has to hold the vibrating anger in her voice in check. 

“We’ll be better off without this one along.” Francis snaps. “He’s been nothing but trouble since we got stuck with him.”

“I'll take him off your hands. Permanently.” She’s not authorized to do this. Oversight might demote her, maybe even fire her. But she can't leave Angus with these monsters. If they're willing to be this brutal in the field, what will they do once they’re back at their own agency?

“Kid’s valuable, even if he is a screw-up. You're gonna have to go through Jamison if you want him,” Riverdon says. 

“Then I will. Right now.” Matty pulls out her phone.

She doesn’t want to talk to Jamison right now. She’s having a hard enough time keeping a grip on her anger now. She doesn’t know if she can keep it in long enough to make a deal with this man and actually strike a bargain. 

When the man answers, he sounds almost bored. Or half-asleep. “Director Webber?”

Matty should be polite and cool, she should make this seem like she’s not all that invested in what happens, like she’s ready to walk away from the deal if it doesn’t suit her, but there’s no way she’s capable of that right now. “I want the fae. Just him. I'll give you the same price we agreed on for his whole team, but I want his contract transferred to the Phoenix. No loopholes, no tricks.”

She should bargain down the price. She should start listing all the things Angus has done that the team claims are his problem and say she’s not willing to pay so much for a problematic asset who hasn’t lived up to the promises Jamison made about him. She should force the price down to something she can more easily justify to Oversight. But Angus is right there, bleeding and shivering on the floor, and she can’t bring herself to say any of this in front of him. She’s already hurt him enough.

“Just the fae?” She can hear the disbelief over the bad connection. 

“Yes. As soon as possible, too. I’m going back to L.A. next sundown.”

“And the partnership?” He sounds a bit nervous.

“Call the fae a downpayment. A holding fee. There are still some things I’d like to work out.” Matty already knows there’s no chance of this. No one who lets agents do this is qualified to train her hunters. But she can’t risk making him angry and jeopardizing the whole deal.

“Ok. I’ll come down with the papers.”

Matty hangs up and looks to the other hunters, still standing around. “Go finish the job.” Matty snaps. Because they still have vamps to deal with. The team already dumped Angus, and Matty’s not one of them. They can finish this alone. And even if they couldn’t, she can’t leave Angus.

The others leave, and finally alone, Matty can let the two tears she’s been forcing back slide down her cheeks. She wipes them away before checking on Angus. No sense in upsetting him even more.

He’s still curled on the floor, covered in blood and dirt, breathing shakily. Matty’s afraid to touch him.

“Oh, Angus, I’m so sorry.” He sits up slowly, flinching, and she can see the tracks of tears running down his grimy face, even though he’s managed to choke them back and still, after all this, hasn’t sobbed, whimpered, or said a thing. “They’re gone. They’re gone.” 


	5. Hotel Room+Coffee Cup

Matty doesn’t dare call a cab; they’ll ask too many questions. Instead, she hotwires the second car that’s been stolen on this mission. _Red Rock is going to have a mysterious rash of unsolved car thefts. But hopefully no more missing persons cases._ She doesn’t know if she really trusts Alpha team to get the job done, but she wouldn’t be able to stand another moment in a room with any of them. She might “accidentally” shoot _them_ in any more standoffs with the vamps.

They have to park, again, over a block away from their hotel so the police don’t trace the stolen car there. Matty insists, this time, on Angus taking her coat. It’s too small for him, and it doesn’t seem to be doing much to stop the now-constant shivering, but it’s the best she can do.

Thankfully, the front desk worker is as sleazy as the rest of the place. He’s at his desk playing a video game on the security camera monitors’ computer, and Matty walks Angus right past without being stopped or questioned. She goes directly to her room, stopping Angus when he starts to walk across the hall.

“You’ll have to stay with me. I’m sorry, it’s all I can do.” She closes and locks the door, and Angus almost collapses onto the bed. He sits stiffly, avoiding moving his back.

“I’ll need to take care your back before anything gets infected. Can you take off your shirt, or do you want me to help?” He shakes his head and slowly, cringing, peels the soaked cloth away from his injuries. Matty wants nothing more than to help, because she can tell every movement is agonizing, but she’s afraid of sending him into some sort of flashback by touching him.

He’s shockingly thin; without the loose cloth to hide it, Matty can see every rib, and his shoulder blades, collarbones, and spine are far too easily visible. She knows he hasn’t eaten since she met him, but how long was he starved before that? He’s only bone.

The name magic allows its users to push a controlled fae beyond their normal physical endurance, but it can only go so far. She can’t believe they let it get bad enough that he collapsed despite the control.

But she wonders if she really can be surprised at anything they’ve done, given the condition of Angus’s back. The freshest wounds, dripping blood that looks strangely more golden than what Matty usually sees on the job, have crossed over other, barely scabbed marks. Matty feels sick. This is how he was punished for letting her help him. _I wanted to help him heal and I only made his life more miserable._ It’s clear this is nowhere near the first time this has happened.

She once again wants to curse Silver Blade’s cheap, shoddy planning when both the hot and cold faucets only run icy water into her hand. The water heater must not be working.

She considers using the coffeemaker to heat the water, but everything in this room feels like it’s covered in a thin layer of grime. She doesn’t really trust that rusty little rattletrap of a coffeemaker not to be carrying some kind of deadly germs inside it somewhere. And the microwave is full of scorch marks, so...just no.

She unwraps one of the small water cups and lets the tap run for a few minutes before filling it. There are some disinfecting wipes in her first aid kit, but there’s a lot of blood that’s run down and started to dry all over his back, and she needs to get that off too.

All the wounds are swollen and red, and some of the deeper ones are oozing. “I think we might need more than a first aid kit. These look bad.”

“It’s not infected. It’s the iron.” Angus shrugs, then flinches. “It’s just kind of an allergy. I’ll be okay in a couple days.”

“Is it okay if I clean them?” She hates having to ask for permission, because what will she do if he refuses? When she worked with Jack, he was stubborn too, but with him Matty could at least try and wrestle him into cooperation; despite her size she’s always been very skilled at taking down anyone she wants to. Trying that with Angus would be a major mistake.

“Yes.” That was much less of a struggle than Matty expected, given how averse Angus was to her helping him last night. Maybe he was just afraid because of his team. The other option is more sickening. _Maybe he assumes that because I bought out his contract I’m going to order him around too. That if he doesn’t do what I want I’ll just use his name to force him to._ She can’t afford to have her hands shaking with anger while she works on open wounds, but she’s coming very, very close.

She tries to be gentle, a word that almost no one has ever used to describe Matty Webber. Still, the raw, torn skin and deep black and purple bruises must hurt terribly every time she has to touch them. Angus barely flinches, even when she cleans the deepest of the new gashes.

“Is there anything else? Any more damage?” Matty asks as she works. She’s not entirely sure she can trust him to be honest, but the way he obeyed her before, she thinks it’s likely he will be. She _hates_ exploiting his obedience like this, but she has to be sure she hasn’t missed something that will end in an infection.

“No, that’s all. They never hurt me enough that I'm not able to work. I could still have finished the mission.” Matty feels sick. There’s a resigned acceptance in his tone. _He knows that the minute it was over, he’d probably have been punished so brutally he’d be out of commission for days._

“I’m sorry I didn’t get you out sooner.” She knows it’s a hollow apology, but it’s the truth.

She finishes with his leg and bandages it carefully as well. “You can get dressed now, okay?’

He starts to pull the soaked, bloodied shirt back on. _Doesn’t he have any extra clothes in his bag? Every hunter carries a change of clothing, just in case._ But it doesn’t seem like that’s even crossed his mind.

“Wait, I’ll get you…” Matty trails off. She doesn’t carry any extra clothes that will fit him. She hasn’t needed to since she stopped working in the field. Unless...She digs into the bottom of her pack and pulls out a wrinkled Metallica t-shirt that’s been in her bag since the last op she ran with Jack. It felt like bad luck to take that, or Patty’s watch, out of there ever again. She’s suddenly glad she had that single attack of sentimentality, and that she hasn’t cleaned out her field bag in years.

The shirt is by no means the warmest thing they could have, but it’s huge on Angus and he doesn't bother sticking his arms through the sleeves. Maybe it hurts too much, or maybe it’s just that he’s warmer leaving them crossed over his chest. She wishes she had a pair of clean pants for him as well, because his own are soaked and muddy, with bloodstains from his back, but there's nothing else of Jack's in her bag. She settles for getting him a towel from the bathroom; it's not ideal but he's shivering so much she doesn't feel comfortable leaving him in wet clothes.

Matty leaves him alone to change, she can give him at least a bit of privacy. She finds her own dry clothes and changes in the tiny bathroom. She hangs her own sodden gear over the rusty shower curtain rod, but Angus’s bloodied, ragged shirt goes straight into the trash. She needs to remember to get rid of that discreetly before they leave so no one asks any questions. 

When she comes out, Angus is sitting almost exactly where she left him. His hair is still dripping, leaving spreading wet patches on his shirt, and he hasn’t stopped shivering. She turns back into the bathroom and digs out another one of the stiff, scratchy towels folded beside the sink. She sits down on the bed beside him and reaches for his hair with the towel.

He tries to take it from her and she pushes his hand away gently. “No, you’re going to pull all your bandages loose if you move your shoulders that much. Let me do it.” She rubs gently at the longish blond mess, trying to get rid of as much water as she can. He’s not shivering quite so badly when she’s done; she considers that successful.

She hands him a coffee cup full of cold soup; she still doesn't trust the coffeemaker. It’s just the reconstituted powdered vegetable beef broth from her pack, but he doesn’t seem to care. He drinks almost half of it in one swallow.

“Slow down, you’ll make yourself sick.” He stops and sits absolutely still with the cup halfway to his mouth, and Matty’s own stomach rolls. _He thought that was an order._ She suddenly remembers that the only name she knows to call him by is the name everyone’s been using to control him. Even if she doesn’t use the Seelie on him, she doesn’t want him to associate her in any way with the people who have exploited him.

“What would you like to be called?”

He stares.

“We don’t force anyone to do anything at this agency. I don't want your name to become common knowledge.” He shakes his head, like this isn’t even processing. “We’re not going to be using it.”

She sits and waits for him to respond. It takes longer than she's comfortable sitting in silence, but _her_ comfort isn't the object here. “I...in school, I used to go by Mac.”

“Mac?”

“My last name’s MacGyver.” She’s glad he doesn’t notice she’s gone absolutely silent. _Oh hell no._ This just went from possibly job-threatening decision to major, major problem.


	6. Contract+Nightmare

It took everything in Matty not to punch Jamison in the face when he showed up at the hotel with the contract. She’d signed off on every necessary document, set up payment, and then gone back to the hotel room with the papers.

She wants to set them on fire and watch them all turn to ashes, but she can’t. No fae is allowed to work outside their colony without being bound by contract. If she doesn’t want to send Angus back to his blood family, which she’s not even sure he has, she’s going to have to hold the contract.

There’s nothing she doesn’t hate about this whole situation. The fact that she _owns_ the boy sitting on the edge of the bed, who flinches when she opens the door, makes her feel uncomfortable in her own skin. She tells herself it’s better this way than someone else having him, and that if she hadn’t done this he might have been killed, but she can’t escape the fact that now she _owns_ another person. This shouldn’t happen.

Mac keeps watching her like he expects her to want something, to ask him something more. It’s past sunrise now; and it makes her wonder how long he normally is kept working. “Mac, you can go to sleep.”

He starts to sit down on the floor, wincing and cringing.

“You don’t need to sleep there, you can have the bed.”

“What?” He frowns at her, confused.

“I’m sleeping in the chair. The bed is for you.”

“Okay.” He sounds confused, but it’s clear that he doesn’t want to argue with her. “You just want me to go to sleep?”

“ _Yes_ , Mac.” She tries to keep the irritation out of her voice. It’s not his fault he can’t really process the idea that someone might just be kind to him with no ulterior motive.

He lies down, a far too small figure under the blanket, and Matty sits down in the hard, stiff chair by the window, letting a bit of the dawn light peek in through the curtains and pulling the contract papers out of her bag. She needs to see exactly what she agreed to. Or really, what Mac agreed to.

She scans the paper, feeling the churning ball of anger inside her grow with each new phrase. She wonders how much of this paper Angus read before signing, or how much he was able to understand. Some of the legalities are only familiar to her because of years spent using those same words in endless policy debates.

She vividly remembers the academy’s training on fae.

_“If you find yourself working with a fae, you have to remember to phrase everything with perfect exactness. Fae are tricksters, and if you leave them any possible loophole they’ll find a way to exploit it. So give them specific, exact commands. And never, under any circumstances, attempt to draw up a contract yourself. Leave that to the legal professionals.”_

At the time, she’d been slightly horrified at the idea that an entire section of the population was considered so untrustworthy they needed to be forced into compliance. For a while she’d secretly been a member of the Moonlight Society, an on-campus group promoting fae rights. They’d had to be careful not to get caught, but they’d hung flyers and left notes all over the academy campus. And then Matty had gotten hand-picked for one of the top Phoenix teams, and being involved in something that risky had to stop. She’d consoled herself with the knowledge that Phoenix avoided employing fae altogether, and she’d never run into this moral dilemma again. And over time, she’d more or less forgotten about the way fae were treated.

She’d like to shake her former self for being so naive. Now she not only is responsible for a fae, which might cost her her entire job, but he’s also her boss’s son. Whom she hadn’t even known existed.

As much as she’s dreading that conversation, she’s almost dreading reading the contract more. She keeps glancing at the shivering boy in the bed, unable to stop wondering what people have done to him or forced him into doing just because they _can._ Even without her using his name, it seems like he’s afraid not to obey her. And when someone does use it, he has no choice at all.

She doesn’t want to think about how that could have been taken advantage of for much more than just field work. She hopes his team drew the line at some point, but after everything she’s seen she can’t assume anything. _Would any of them have abused the power they have over him that much?_ It sickens her that she doesn’t _know_.

She goes back to reading, hoping that will push at least these thoughts away. It doesn’t help much. This contract is brutally exact, made by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

_-Under no circumstances will the undersigned fae reveal the conditions of their situation to anyone outside the agency. Failure to follow this clause will result in punishment determined at the discretion of employing team._

_-If name control is lost during the course of an objective for any reason, the undersigned fae will complete the objective as ordered while under the control of the handler._

_-If reassigned, there will be no attempt to appeal changes. Control will be fully and permanently transferred to new handler. Reassignment may be made at any time, without consultation, by agency head. The agency retains no obligation to explain reason for transfer._

_-If temporarily put on loan to any outside contractor, the undersigned fae will retain duty first and foremost to employing agency. Any order that falls against the best interest of the employing agency must be disregarded._

Matty freezes. This was bad enough when she assumed Mac was specifically working only with his own team. They might be a miserable excuse for hunters, but at the very least they needed him in decent condition to work. _Have they ever done this? Loaned him out?_ Transfers between teams at the same agency are fairly common, but Matty’s never heard of this before. _Maybe it was just a precaution. Fae contracts are full of ‘just in case’ clauses that never get used._

She continues reading, pushing away the mental image of Michaels handing Mac over to some random stranger, telling them his name and assuring them he’ll be completely obedient if they use it.

_-Under no circumstance will the undersigned fae deviate from the terms and conditions of this contract._

There’s a soft, choking sob from the bed. Matty stands up, her back protesting the stiff hotel couch, and walks across the room.

“No, please. Don’t do this!” Mac is shaking, hands fisted in the blankets, tugging them tightly around him like it’s some kind of protection. “Please! I don’t want to! Please, please.” His voice trails into gasping sobs. “I don’t want to. Don’t touch me, please, please, please.” Matty doesn’t want to hear any more.

“Mac, wake up. It’s okay, you’re alright.” She thinks he’s going to, he shifts and gasps in a shaky breath, but it seems like his dreams are only changing.

“No, no no, don’t make me do this!” His voice breaks and trails off into a shattered repetition. “Please, please, please, please.” She has no idea what he’s begging not to do, but anything, anything, is horrible. “He didn’t...they aren’t who we’re here for. You need to get them out first. Don’t make me do this!” Matty instinctively reaches for his arm, but that's a mistake.

He clutches the blankets in a death grip and shies away from Matty’s hands. “No, no, no. Please, no. Please, I’ll do anything else. Anything. Please.”

“It's okay, no one's going to hurt you, and no one else is hurt either. You're safe.” Matty desperately wants to hug him, hold him tight and reassure him that at least one person in his life thinks he's a human being worth caring about. But if she does he'll only panic more.

Finally the raw fear in his eyes fades, replaced with confusion and disbelief. He looks from her to the bed and back again, growing more and more agitated.

“Mac, are you okay?”

He swallows, looks down at his hands, then back at her. “I’m sorry. Usually I have more control. It won’t happen again.” He shakes his head. “I swear, I don’t panic like this normally. You just need to use my name. You won’t have a problem with me if you do. I’ll do anything.” His hands are white knuckled, fists clenched in the material of Jack's old t-shirt.

Matty takes a deep breath. _Don’t get mad, don’t get mad._ She can scream and throw things and think of a thousand ways to murder every member of Alpha team later. Right now there’s a frightened, broken boy who needs her.

“I’ll stop crying. I will.” He makes a desperate effort, swallowing hard.

Matty stands up. “I’ll go get you a glass of water, okay?” It’s obvious he doesn’t want her to see how miserable he is, and the least she can do is make an excuse that gives him a few minutes to collect himself. She’s pretty certain he’s not the type to want her pity.

When she hands him the glass, he stares at it for a moment, then takes a small sip before handing it back to her.

“Are you going to be able to go back to sleep?” She's considering running out to the corner drugstore and looking for some kind of herbal tea. She guesses something natural won't hurt a fae; they don't always react well to human medication.

“Yes, I'm sorry I bothered you. Just tell me not to make any more noise. It works, that’s what my team does.”

She nearly shatters the glass in her hand. He screams in his sleep because in the midst of all the cruelty that’s been thrown at him, he’s been forced to be silent. And then they even stopped that. _Didn’t want to be reminded what they were doing to an innocent boy._

Things like this shouldn’t happen to anyone, least of all someone like Mac.

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Why?” And the sheer confusion in his face is heartbreaking. “Why would you want me around when I’m a problem, if you can fix it?”

“Because you’re not a problem. You’re allowed to be hurt or upset or sad or frightened, Mac, you’re human.”

“No I’m not.” He says it as matter-of-factly as if he’s learned it by heart.

Matty wants to cry and hug him but neither one of those will be good right now. “Yes you are. And from now on, no one controls you but you. You can make your own decisions and no one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to. I swear.”

“No one wants nothing. I don’t know what to do if you don’t tell me what you want.” He looks down at his hands. “There has to be something you think I’m good for. Everyone can think of something they want from a fae.”

He glances back up at her, and she can see how conflicted he is. All he knows is to do what he’s told. But he’s been so hurt and frightened by the people who control him that he’s afraid to be ordered to do anything too.

Matty doesn’t say anything. What can she say? _I just want you to have a normal life? To be treated decently? To be happy?_


	7. Parent+Phoenix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting twice today because tomorrow we move my brother into college! I probably won't have time to write anything then, but I wanted to get this chapter up now.

Matty is prepared for this meeting to go badly, even job-endingly badly. She knew it was serious the minute Oversight asked for a face-to-face. She hasn’t had a meeting like that with the man in almost four years. Even the beginning of the Coven Wars wasn’t enough to warrant that level of attention.

Now she’s standing in front of his desk, meeting those steely cold eyes as confidently as she can without looking disrespectful.

“You went far outside your scope of operation, Director. Purchase of a contracted fae, without authorization, that could be grounds for immediate dismissal.”

“There wasn’t time to file paperwork and wait ten days for it to clear red tape! He was being beaten half to death by his own team members.” Matty’s usually good at keeping emotion out of her voice. One of the reasons Oversight promoted her to Director was that she’s good at seeing the big picture. Individuals aren’t as important as completing the end goal; it’s just the way the hunting world works. You can’t coddle every agent you put in the field, and above all you can’t get too attached. But this is different.

“The Phoenix has strict policies against employing any fae. And now, thanks to your impulsive actions, we’re not only responsible for one in the field, we actually own his contract. This should have come to me before you made a personal, emotional call in the field.”

Matty finally snaps. “James, are you telling me I need to get your approval before rescuing your own son? Do you have any idea what they were doing to him?” Matty shivers, thinking back to the makeshift entry interview she’d done on their way back from the job.

_“What are your skills, Mac? What can you bring to the Phoenix?” She hated even asking that question, it felt like she was forcing him to prove he was valuable._

_“Well, I can fix almost anything except a computer, because magic and tech don’t mix well. I’m good at improvising, and I can make pretty much anything I need in the field with what I find around me, as you can see. And I’m good for trading for information.”_

_“What?” She had the horrible feeling that her fears from last night were about to be confirmed._

_“If you need something from someone, you can loan me to them for a while. My team did it all the time; it usually works. If they know enough Seelie to make knowing my name worth it. Michaels always said it was the best way to get information fast, because a lot of people will do pretty much anything to get their hands on a fae for a while.” And Matty had forced herself to swallow back the bile in her throat and continue._

“Whatever they did was within the law, if he’d signed a contract with them. He should have read it and made sure of what he was getting into. I taught him better than to be duped like that.” He actually has the nerve to sound disappointed.

“James! He was eighteen! And desperate! Do you expect him to have known every legal nuance and every possible loophole?”

“I expect to be left alone, not badgered about others’ incompetencies as if they are somehow my fault.” He’s not even looking at her anymore, attention focused on some paperwork on his desk.

“You have some sort of responsibility to him. He’s your child.”

“He’s a fae. I cannot intervene without jeopardizing everything I’ve been working toward for the past ten years. I would think you could understand that. The welfare of hundreds is always going to outweigh the welfare of one person. I can’t allow myself to form sentimental attachments and continue to do my job impartially.”

Matty wonders if this is the reason he abandoned his son all those years ago. It wasn’t good PR to have married a fae-blood. And James is all about the image and the prestige.

“You can keep him, if you’ve gotten so attached. But I want nothing to do with him. Whatever happens to him is on you and you alone, Matilda. Don’t come to me for help. About anything to do with Angus. I can’t be seen to associate myself at all with a fae.” And in that moment, Matty hates that Mac’s own father knows his son’s name. She closes the door behind her on her way out with something that’s just short of being considered a slam.

Mac’s in medical; they need to actually have a qualified doctor treat those injuries, and she’d asked them to do an entry eval physical as well. Matty had the feeling when she dropped him off that he’s going to be one of those problematic agents who try to avoid medical at all costs, so she’s advised Doctor Collins, their medical director, to do the physical while they have a legitimate reason to keep Mac there.

When Collins hands her the paperwork to sign, she can see the green phoenix stamp at the top, with a C below it. _Physical passed, conditional._ It’s not the F that marks a pass for field agent, but at least it isn’t the red rejection R.

Mac is sitting in a chair by the door, leg jittering, fingers twisting yet another paperclip. When he sees Matty, he drops the wire to the floor and shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Welcome to the Phoenix, Mac.” She signs the papers and hands them back. “I’ll talk to you upstairs.”

It seems like he couldn’t be happier to be out those doors. Matty’s about to follow him when Collins calls her back quietly.

“I’ve cleared him for entry, because I don’t want to see him trying to go anywhere else, but there’s a laundry list of issues. He’s got old injuries that have healed pretty well, but I’d be willing to bet his left knee will always give him some trouble, there’s been significant damage. He’s severely malnourished as well. Obviously, I’m not really qualified to give you exact opinions on fae, that’s not my area of expertise, but he’s also got some very severe mental trauma that really ought to land him in a long-term counseling situation. I don’t know exactly what happened to him out there, I didn’t want to push him too far, but he's got the kind of trauma reactions I've only ever seen in sexual assault cases.” He sighs. "I'd like to have done a full evaluation, but I think it's a little soon for him, since there's no clear reason to suspect a medical issue."

Even though Matty already knew, hearing it from Collins is just another stab in the heart. _For a fae, having their name used against them is the most intimate violation possible. The repercussions are on par with those of a rape victim._ And Matty’s absolutely certain Mac’s been taken advantage of in more ways than that, given what she heard in those nightmares. She’s not going to be able to forget his pleading cries of “Don’t touch me, please, don’t make me do this,” anytime soon. Or the way he begged someone not to make him hurt anyone. _What did that team force him to do?_ She’s beginning to wonder about a lot of the legality of their operations.

She takes a single deep breath and then looks out the door. Mac’s going to wonder where she is. “He didn’t say anything about it, did he.” It’s not even a question.

“No. I asked a few things, nothing direct, and he avoided every single question. He’s not going to open up easily.” Matty already knows trying to take him to someone who might be able to help is going to be met with absolute refusal. And while with any other agent she’d give the ultimatum of “go to counseling or quit the job”, the majority of Mac’s issues are that he’s been ordered and forced into doing things he didn’t want to. She’ll have to be patient.

“I wouldn’t recommend him for the field. Too many issues, too much trauma. You should have one of the psych people do a more in-depth eval, but I don’t know if he’ll go for it.”

“I’m not planning on putting him in the field. Thank you.”

She wonders, when this report crosses Oversight’s desk, if he’ll spend more than half a minute skimming it. If he’ll feel at all guilty when he reads Collins’s clinical but still painful notes. If he’ll even think about whether this, all of it, is his fault.

She’d be willing to bet that he won’t. He wrote Mac off a long time ago. Now it’s up to Matty to try and repair the damage as best she can. But there are some things even a kid genius like Mac can’t fix with paper clips and string. If only it was that easy.

She forces herself not to act any differently when she walks into the War Room and sees Mac standing by a chair, waiting for her. One hand is in a pocket again; she wonders if that’s where he keeps his apparently never-ending supply of paper clips. She remembers seeing a note on his file earlier. _Possible ADHD/Autism. Unsure of diagnosis with fae neurology. Would seek second opinion._

“What do you want me to do?” Mac shuffles slightly, half-looking at Matty as she moves to her own chair.

“For starters, you can sit down.”

He does, stiffly. Matty flinches again. Everything sounds like an order to him, even a joke. _Why did I have to be born sarcastic and harsh?_ She consciously adjusts her tone of voice so it’s softer and less likely to be demanding.

“I’ve thought of something that you can do for us. It would be a massive help to the agency if you’d work with our R&D team.”

“Most people don’t want my inventions.” He shrugs. “They’re too...improvised. They might not work at all.”

“I want to hear your ideas.” Matty’s seen this kid do some pretty incredible stuff in the field. If he’s selling himself short, it’s because the people who’ve controlled him have made him believe he’s worthless and stupid.

“I told Jamison we could make better gear. Flashlights that could mimic sunlight, whistles to fake some of their simpler communication.”

“And he didn’t listen?”

“He did, at first. But the other hunters didn’t want to use anything a fae made. I think they were afraid I wanted to sabotage things. They said hunters had been doing the same things for years and it was working. And Jamison stopped trying to convince them.” He glances at her, like he’s about to say something he’s not sure will make her happy. “I carried some things I made anyway. But sometimes things get lost and I have to improvise. Like the whistle.” He pulls that out of his bag and hands it to her. “I can make almost anything I need if I can find the right things.”

Matty glances at the whistle, _I can’t believe he made this in about five minutes, while we were all under attack,_ and then hands it back. “We have a very advanced technical division, and they’re always looking for new ideas. I’d love for you to work with them if that’s what you want.”

“Is it a lab job?”

“Yes.” She was hoping that would be a good thing, keep him away from the kind of life that’s half-destroyed him. But he doesn’t look as pleased as she’d hoped. He’s trying to fake that it sounds good to him, that he wants this, but his eyes can’t hide disappointment. “Mac, what’s wrong? Don’t worry about telling me.”

He tried several times to say something, each time cutting himself off and glancing at her. She keeps nodding for him to continue, and finally he blurts out, as if he’s saying it before he loses his nerve, “I...would you mind...if I stayed in the field?” He’s staring at his shoes. “I’m good at it, and I want to protect people. And right now you need every hunter you can get.”

She sighs inwardly, but he’s not wrong. _I wonder if I can get him to go to a more extensive psych eval._ “If that’s what you want, I’ll make sure you get a field assignment. You’ll have to go through some more tests, and I’d like you to take a few weeks to heal before then. Try working in the lab, see if you like it. And then after that we can discuss your options again.”

“I don’t think I’ll change my mind.” He looks at his hands. “My dad was a hunter, it’s in my blood.” Matty wants to tell him everything, right then and there, because the loss and hurt in his voice is so overwhelming. But she can’t. The best she can do is give him someone who might, in time, come to fill that gaping hole in his life.

“I know someone who will be a great partner for you.” Jack has been breaking in new recruits since they lost Patty, never committing to a full-time team anymore. But he’s very, very good at keeping his people safe. He won’t let anything happen to Mac out there, not if he has to sacrifice himself to do it.

And just like Matty herself, Jack has a hidden soft side. He doesn’t let many people see it, but he’s one of the kindest, most loyal people Matty has ever met. And Mac is sorely in need of someone like that in his life. Matty wants to be that person, desperately, but she is also Director. She has an entire agency to run, and if she focuses too much on one hunter, the others could suffer for it. But the next best thing is handing him off to someone she would trust with her life.

“Jack Dalton was part of the first hunting team I ever worked with. He’s a skilled field agent and a good man, and there’s no one I trust more.”

“Please, please don't tell him. About any of it.” There is a real, desperate fear in Mac's eyes. “Please.”

Matty understands. To fae, someone they don’t trust knowing and using their name is a horrifying, intimate violation. That in itself is a hard thing for him to deal with, let alone everything else he’s been through in the past few years. None of what’s happened in his past is a pretty story, and she can respect that he doesn’t want to tell her or anyone right now.

He doesn’t want anyone’s pity or sympathy. He wants a fresh start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the end of what I'm calling "Part One" of this fic. From here on out it's going to be a lot more Mac and Jack centric, and we'll see the beginnings of their friendship (well, if you can call it that at first, cause it's gonna be rough to start). Matty will still be there, just not quite as involved. 
> 
> It might take me a little while to get "Part Two" written and up, but it is outlined and I'm not going to not write it, so updates will be starting again probably after this weekend!


	8. Phone Call+Hamburger Kid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you couldn't already tell, this is the first Jack POV ;)

_ I really hope this is worth me getting out of bed at five p.m. _ Jack Dalton was actually looking forward to this weekend. He’s between assignments at the moment, with his last partner in the infirmary (not Jack’s fault, the kid was a trainee and tried to pull some stupid hero crap, and currently has one leg in traction). He was hoping to spend at least one weekend back home in Texas, able to forget about this hellish war. He was hoping for actual sunlight instead of neon lights, and fresh dusty wind that smells like sage and not smog, and tumbleweeds rolling across the road instead of garbage cans and fast food wrappers. 

But the phone call, blaring AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells”, means only one thing. It’s Matty. And that never means anything good. 

“Matty, I really hope whatever this is is can be wrapped up in the next twenty minutes, ‘cause I’d like to get a decent amount of sleep before hitting the road.”

“The ranch will have to wait, Dalton.” 

_ Damn, I knew it. _ He tries not to sound like a disappointed teenager when he asks, “What’s so important you have to take away the first vacation I’ve had in ten months?”

“We have a new field operative I’d like you to work with.” Matty’s voice sounds...different than normal. Not quite as stiff, not quite as cold.  _ Maybe she actually does feel bad about dragging me back in. _

“Are you sure this can’t wait?” Jack is already pulling on his shoes, but he really doesn’t understand.

“I’m leaving for Portland today. I’m hoping to meet with their director tonight, see if he’s willing to partner with us. I need this agent partnered off by then.” Matty isn’t really one for focusing on details like this. She usually leaves assignment of new agents up to someone else's judgment. Something isn’t right.

Jack tosses the two duffel bags in the passenger seat of his GTO into the back before getting in. He doesn’t need them sitting there mocking him. 

The Phoenix is quiet this early in the evening. The hallways feel hollow without the clumping of tac boots, muttered planing, and the smell of coffee. Jack finds Matty in the War Room, standing and waiting for him, with someone behind her, tucked so far back into the corner of the room Jack almost misses him standing there. Except for the way he’s almost... _ glowing? What the hell? _

The kid seems as far from a field agent as Jack can imagine. He’s a pretty boy, pale, with messy blond hair and wide blue eyes that seem skittish, like a frightened deer. He’s fidgeting, twisting something in his hands almost frantically, and he won’t look Jack in the eye.

_ This is gonna be great. _ Jack can usually tell in a few minutes if an agent is going to make it in the field. Some are too cocky, overconfident, out to be heroes. Some are lone wolves, not willing to be team players, glory hounds. And some, like this kid, just aren’t tough enough. A few hours in the field and he’ll be whining about dirt or a paper cut or being tired. 

“Jack, this is your new field partner.” Matty slides a dossier across the table to him. Jack picks it up. 

_ Okay, I didn’t think it was possible for this to get worse, but it has. _ The kid is supposedly twenty, he’s been a hunter for another agency after dropping out of MIT ( _ Oh hell no, not a nerd, I can’t work with someone who thinks they know everything cause they went to college _ ). And his name is even worse than some of Jack’s aliases.  _ Angus MacGyver?  _

“What the hell kinda hamburger name is Angus?” Jack can see Matty glaring at him. But geez.  _ Really? _

“Fae like to use old family names that get handed down. Please don't call me that, I go by Mac.”

Ok. That’s crossing the line. 

Jack has no patience with the fae. He’s always been grateful for Phoenix’s blanket statement of non-acceptance of fae hunters. Jack doesn’t need one of those prissy little drama queens mucking up his ops. He has enough trouble with human hunters. He leans down closer to Matty. He doesn’t particularly care if the kid hears what he’s saying or not, but he thinks Matty might punch him if he says it too loudly.

“Matty, I can’t do my job if I have to look out for some snot-nosed, entitled kid.”

“He’s a qualified field agent, Dalton.” Her words are clipped and stiff.

“He's  _ fae. _ ” Jack can’t believe this. Not only have they broken one of the Phoenix’s cardinal principles, but they've decided Jack has nothing better to do with his life than babysit this kid. He could be training a hunter who will actually amount to something. “What is he even doing here? I thought Oversight had a rule.”

“You say it yourself all the time, Jack, rules are made to be broken. And he’s certainly worth breaking them for.”

Jack can’t see why. And he can’t understand this strange affection Matty seems to have for the kid. Hell, she doesn’t even like  _ Jack _ that much, and they used to be partners. 

“He’s an exceptional field agent, and I’ve seen him in action. No one else can work out a plan on the fly like he does, and it works.” 

“Okay, who are you and what have you done with Matty? Because the Matilda Webber I know  _ hates, _ and I quote, ‘agents who see fit to disregard orders and fly by the seat of their pants during a mission’.” Jack has lost count of the times he’s heard that from Matty. She’s not a fan of the way Jack likes to assess situations in the field and make executive decisions without her. 

“The difference between him and you, Dalton, is that what he does works.”  _ Ouch. _ Matty is really pouring on the salt tonight.  _ What did I do to her to deserve this? _ It wasn’t Jack’s fault his last partner was a moron and got hurt. And it wasn’t Jack’s fault this new nerd kid has a silly hamburger name and won’t last a day out there on the L.A. streets. But she’s been coming down hard on him ever since that little joke.  _ What the hell is with her and hamburger kid? _

Jack wonders if it has something to do with that rumored merger with the Silver Blade agency. He’d heard they had a fae working with them. The nightlife informants he has are loyal to the Phoenix, though, so they don’t know much about the rival agency or its hunters. Only rumors. But he’s been in the business long enough to know that rumors aren’t to be trusted. 

“I want you both in the field tonight.” Matty fixes Jack with her signature stare, the one no one’s wise to disagree with. 

“Sure.” Jack nods. He’d like to get a few more hours of sleep, and he’s going to go grab those on his favorite ratty couch in the break room. The Phoenix has plenty of accommodations for agents who need to sleep there between missions, but that couch has been there since Jack was a junior agent, and he’s claimed it as his. He’s kicked a few newbies off it before. Today, it’s empty.

When Jack wakes up, the sun’s going down. He grabs his gear from his locker and heads to the situation room. Hopefully his new trainee will be there. 

The kid’s already in the room and waiting, but that’s about the only plus to this. He’s still shaky, he’s twisting another paperclip like his life depends on it, and he answers Jack only with nods or single, quiet words. 

He doesn’t even seem prepared for the field. Jack wonders who in their right mind wears a pale blue shirt and tan pants on a hunt. _He’s never gonna get the blood outta that._ _And without a jacket, he’s gonna get shredded. Vamp teeth and claws are nothing to mess around with._ Jack’s own well-loved coat has been repaired several times.

“You’re gonna need a jacket, kid.” There are plenty of extras laying around lately, although Jack really wishes that wasn’t the case. He’s pretty sure no one has cleaned out Cooper’s locker yet, and he was about the fae’s general size.

“I don’t need one. Vamps can’t touch me, they get burned.”

“Oh yeah? Keep telling yourself that until one rips your throat out.”

Jack knows it’s not quite fair to take out his frustration on the kid. It’s Matty who dragged him back here and set this up. But still, if hamburger kid wasn’t here Jack would be in his GTO on the open road headed for home. 

“So here’s the deal. You already know all about the Coven War, seeing as you’ve been with an agency for a while. But your guys were working the other side of town, dealing mostly with the Shore Bay coven and the random little groups popping up. Down here we’ve got two big groups, the Blood Oath and the  _ Colmillo Largo _ . They’re the ones who started this damn war, and we haven’t been able to get to their leaders yet. All we’re doing right now, until we get more intel, is damage control. Street patrols, breaking up vamp-vamp and vamp-human scuffles.” The kid nods. 

“Neither of the covens is fond of us, so basically as soon as we walk out the door we have targets on our backs. We’ve got a few allies, especially Patty Thornton who owns the Chrysalis Club, but she’s only got so much influence.” Patty’s been more helpful than usual since the war started. Very likely she’d like to see the major covens go down so she has a chance to slip into the power vacuum. If the humans win this thing, Jack wouldn’t be surprised to see Patty become L.A.’s new vampire queen in the aftermath. He wouldn’t mind that happening. It would be nice to have the city’s vamps working with the Phoenix instead of against them.

Jack coils his silver whip, his favorite of the weapons he carries, and slips it into the special holster at his side. Most hunters, at least ones who’ve been in the business a long time, develop a special fondness for one or two weapons. Jack’s are his whip (growing up in Texas, he was very, very good at it, county whip cracking champion his sophomore year of high school), and his modified Beretta. He slips two extra clips of silver bullets into his belt along with his gun.

It doesn’t look like the kid’s packing anything. Jack watches him take a Swiss Army Knife out of his pocket and inspect the blades.  _ That’s not gonna do you any good if a vamp comes at you. How the hell have you survived the field at all? _

“If your agency supplied weapons, we can make sure to requisition you something from the armory.”

“I prefer not to carry a gun.” 

_ You’ve got to be kidding me. Matty, are you punishing me for something? I swear that little mess in Chinatown was not my fault. Mostly. _ Jack decides he’s better off not asking any more questions. He may explode.

Jack almost doesn’t want to let the kid get in his GTO. His car deserves better than carrying around an idiot who doesn’t have the faintest idea how to survive.  _ Well, maybe he’ll get himself in over his head tonight and there’ll be a legitimate reason to get rid of him.  _

They’re driving the patrol grid for Jack’s section, keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, with Jack occasionally feeling generous enough to impart some hard-earned Dalton wisdom to this nerd, when he sees it. He brakes the car so fast the kid is thrown against the seatbelt.

“That’s one of our marks.” A short blond woman, built like a pro wrestler, is standing near the entrance to an alley. If the vivid crimson painting her lips and the red glint in her eyes weren’t enough to mark her as a vamp, the thick choker with the Blood Oath’s emblem hanging from it would be. She glances at the street, and seeing the car, vanishes into the darkness behind her. 

Jack jumps out, and the kid does too. Rather surprisingly, the kid beats him to the alley entrance. By the time Jack gets there, the fae is bent over examining something about the ground, his forehead crinkled in concentration.

“Come on, princess, we ain’t got all day.” Jack is about to walk forward anyway when the kid’s hand stops him.

“I don’t want us to walk into a trap.” He’s talking so softly Jack almost misses it. 

“Yeah, well, at this rate we’re gonna be dead of old age before any trap kills us.” Jack shrugs and steps forward. 

There’s suddenly a tight grip on his wrist, just above the leather cuff that gives Jack unquestioned entry to Patty’s Chrysalis Club. “Look.”

Jack sees it. Now. A thin wire stretched a few inches above the ground. This place is clearly one the vamps didn’t want people coming into uninvited.  _ I wonder why? _

He keeps a hand on his whip as they continue down the alley, taking short steps to avoid hitting any of the bottles and cans strewn about everywhere. They can’t risk using any light, since they don’t want to alert the vamps to their presence before they have to. 

Jack hears it before he sees it. Shouts, laughter, screeching, gasps and moans. 

It’s one of the highly popular, highly illegal “blood parties” that vamps hold in secret locations. They advertise them on the darknet, changing the format and platforms every few days so they’re harder to trace. Humans obsessed with vamps, who have some knowledge of the nightlife, follow these postings to find places where for a few hours, they can become a vamp’s “host”. Jack’s heard, from people he’s arrested breaking up these shindigs, that it’s almost an erotic act, especially from the vamp’s perspective. Hosting’s not permanent, not a turning, but it’s still dangerous. 

Most law-abiding vampires avoid human blood, sticking to the synthetic substitutes that were invented a couple decades ago. It’s almost unheard of now for there to be blood bank raids. Kills are even less common. But Patty’s always said there’s no faking the real thing, and it can drive anyone who gets their hands on it wild. Some vamps get carried away and drain hosts dry. Others decide to keep their host permanently.

The party’s being held inside a bar, which has a back entrance onto the alley, probably one of those hidden rooms that doesn’t open into the main area and is practically invisible to a normal patron. Jack activates his comm. “This is Thunderstallion, we’ve got a host party in grid 14a, requesting a raid team on site.” Even in the dim light, he can see the look on hamburger kid’s face when he hears Jack’s code name.  _ Well, it’s way cooler than being named after a cow! _ Jack wants to defend his choice of code name, but this isn’t the time.

They’ll need to keep an eye on the place, make sure their target doesn’t slip out before backup arrives. Jack pulls the kid behind a dumpster where they have a decent view of the rear exit. 

“What’s this?” an unfamiliar voice hisses. Jack forces himself not to startle too much. He hates how silently vamps can sneak up on people.

“Just checking out the party. Sounds like the place to be,” Jack shrugs, and hopes the kid follows his lead. “Heard there was gonna be some action tonight.” 

“You don’t look much like a host to me.” The vamp isn’t alone. Jack can see two more shadows flanking him. One of them is way too close to the kid. Jack would almost be willing to risk a quick tangle here and now, and try to run for it, but if the kid gets grabbed...he may not like the fae, but he doesn’t want to see him dead or turned.

“Inside. Boss’ll want to check out your story.” Jack turns toward the door, raising his hands just enough to be visibly unthreatening. He doesn’t know if these vamps already know he’s a hunter, but if they don’t, he’d rather not give it away just yet. Hunters’ patrol gear is specifically made not to look tactical. Black leather jackets, combat boots, and belts that mostly conceal their gear mean they can just as easily pass as edgy street punks or heavy metal fans. The kind of people who tend to like to frequent vamp parties. It’s a useful cover.

“Hey boss, we found these two lurking around outside.” The woman they’ve been following turns around from the bar as the group enters, a genuine bloody Mary in her hand. 

The vamp closest to Jack shoves his shoulder, and when he pulls away the movement reveals the glint of silver from his whip.  _ Ah, damnit. _

Jack is suddenly the very unwanted center of attention. The vamps surrounding him hiss and close in, and the “Boss” bares her fangs. Jack guesses if he can shoot all four, he just might be able to get himself and the kid out before anyone else in here realizes what’s happening, the music is loud and most of the vamps are distracted by their hosts. 

Suddenly, Jack sees movement out of the corner of his eye, some pale shape darting toward the bar and the fan set up on it that is blowing some of the heavy, sweaty, over-heated air around the room. 

There’s a cloud of something powdery and choking filling the room in the split second after that. Jack’s eyes and throat are burning. He can’t see where anyone is, let alone their vamp.

“Let’s go!” Someone grabs his arm and pulls, and he almost socks them in the jaw before he realizes it’s just his partner. 

“What the hell was that?”

“Garlic powder.” The kid has his shirt pulled up over his mouth and nose. “It won’t hurt them long term, but they’re not going to be happy for a while.”

“Next time, give me a warning!” Jack can hear the vamps coughing and shouting as he and hamburger kid stumble out into the alley. He blinks a few times to clear his eyes, still coughing, when he hears an ungodly screech. The kid is trying to push the dumpster on his own, clearly planning on using it to barricade the door. Jack wipes his watering eyes on his sleeve and helps as much as he can. 

By the time the raid vehicles arrive, Jack thinks he may never be able to breathe normally again, and he and the kid are both sitting on the ground in front of the dumpster, covered in muck that Jack doesn’t even want to think about. 

Jack is almost impressed. Almost. It’s going to take more than one successful vamp capture (although he’s pretty sure this is the first time a patrol team has taken down an entire host party without backup) to make him believe this boy might actually live up to Matty’s apparent expectations. 

“Well, you’ve survived your first patrol and haven’t gotten yourself or me killed. Congratulations, princess,” Jack says as they’re getting back in the car (only after he’s covered the seats with some old towels.

The kid doesn’t say anything. Just sits there, twisting yet another paperclip in his grimy fingers. He doesn’t seem excited about the success or frightened by the close call or even angry that Jack’s being condescending. Jack sighs.  _ And we have to do it all again tomorrow. Why is this my life? _


	9. Cracked Rib+Smoke Alarm

“See you tomorrow, TInkerbell.” Dalton slams his locker closed and gives Mac’s shoulder a familiar but hard shove. Mac waits until he’s gone before leaning against the locker, resting his forehead on the rusty metal and letting out a slow, shaky breath.

He’s tried, for the past three and a half weeks, not to let his partner's casual, meaningless comments get to him, but he can't stop the memories. Mac picks up his bag and walks out of the Phoenix. It’s nearly an hour’s walk for him to get home from here, but he can’t ask anyone for a ride. They can’t know where his house is; it’s the only safe place he has left. 

He could get a car, but being around the heated iron in Jack’s car all night leaves him slightly nauseous and sniffly. He’d rather not deal with it any longer than he has to. The fresh air feels good, and normally these walks are time to clear his head, but today he can’t stop thinking about everything that’s wrong. 

As soon as he gets past the main roads and leaves the gritty, trash-strewn sidewalks behind, he slips his shoes off and ties the laces together, putting them over his shoulder. Jack would laugh at him, but he needs to feel the ground under his feet after hours of walking on asphalt. He barely looks up at the sunrise coming over the trees, and he can’t hear the birds chattering and singing over the voices in his own head. 

_ “Fae? He won’t make it a day in the field. He’ll come back crying for home and safety.” _ He barely feels the sting of thorns catching at his hands when he passes a bramble bush.  _ “You know the fae aren’t trustworthy.” “We have a contract. He’s not going to be causing problems any time soon.” _ Mac stumbles over a root. He’s not normally this clumsy when he’s out here. He should be in tune with the world around him, moving with it instead of being caught off guard.

Jack doesn’t get angry at him for being clumsy like Michaels did. Jack makes sarcastic, cutting comments that hurt almost as badly as Michaels’s belt. Whenever Mac messes up, which isn’t often now. He can’t afford to make mistakes, to make them think they might be better off getting rid of him.  _ Where else will I go? _

There are only so many jobs a fae can have in the human world. Mac can’t go back to the fae colony; Grandfather insulted them and Mac cut any remaining ties when he chose a human education over a traditional fae one. So he’s left with the options of being a hunter, _ (and who will want a hunter who’s been kicked out of two agencies?) _ , a contract farm worker  _ (who will get next to no pay and be forced to work in terrible conditions) _ , a lab rat  _ (they say the clinical trials are safe but Mac knows better; fae and human biology are too different and his mother died because people didn’t believe that) _ , or a prostitute  _ (and sell the only assets he has left, his body and what remains of his pride, to stay alive). _ He can’t lose his place at the Phoenix. He can’t.

He can’t go back to a life where people look at him like he’s a piece of property, where they talk about him like he isn’t in the room, or worse, talk to him like he’s accepted this life and is comfortable with it. He’s lost track of the times Alpha team’s contacts and informants decided to take a jab at him. 

_ “What’s a fae doing working with the humans? Did your people think you weren’t good enough?” _

_ “Hey, pretty boy, is it true what they say about the fae? That if you know their name they'll do anything you tell them?” _

Even then he could take it. It was all empty chatter, they couldn't do anything to him. His team wouldn't let them. Until they did.

_ “Is the fae yours? If he is, I'm willing to make you a deal. Let me have him for a day, and I'll tell you where your rogue vamp’s hiding out.” _

That was one of the few times Mac had tried to ask his team to change their minds. It was okay if his own team knew his name; they had to. It was the job. But giving it away to anyone and everyone was different. He’d never feel safe again if every stranger they wanted to bargain with had that kind of power over him. All he’d gotten in response was a few slaps and kicks, and a sharp reminder that he wasn’t allowed to argue with the team’s decision. 

It was supposed to be once, but once turned into ten, twenty, thirty times as the Silver Blade realized a name-bound fae was one of the biggest bargaining chips a team could take into the field. 

He stopped thinking there was anything wrong with that arrangement after a while. It was what they had to do to get the job done, and it was all he was good for. Now that he’s outside that life, he can see how twisted and wrong it was, and all the fear and pain he was pushing away to try and survive has come back. And made him afraid of his own partner. 

He knows Jack would never, ever, ask something like that of him. But he just doesn’t know that the jokes he makes and the way he teases Mac sounds too much like what every one of those people said when they saw him.  _ No, don’t think about it. Don’t go back there. _ He rests one hand on his house door, and the latch slips silently open, responding to his magic. He walks through the house to his bedroom as fast as he can, hoping Bozer’s not awake yet. Tonight was rough. 

Mac sits down on the bed and tries not to cry. Inspecting his own cracked ribs is no easy job, but he still hates going to medical and he can’t explain to Bozer why he’s this injured working third shift for a government think tank. 

Boze doesn’t know about any of this. He knows Mac is fae, that was unavoidable after Mac’s magic lashed out and summoned a full scale storm in the school gym one day when the bullies were ganging up on him.  Bozer had claimed it was their science fair project malfunctioning, even though he didn't have a single class with Mac and the only time they'd really seen each other before was when Bozer stopped Donnie Sandoz from showing Mac in a locker.

He’d been the first human who didn't seem afraid of the fae on principle. When Mac asked why, Boze had told him, “Mama always said bad stuff happens when people start thinking just because someone's different they're not worth caring about. She says when you've seen as much hatred and racism as she has, you learn it only hurts everyone.”

Up until he dropped out of MIT, Mac and Bozer were practically siblings. But the hunting is different. Humans are never supposed to find out that vampires are real. So Mac’s had to lie to the only real friend he has. And now the one person who accepted Mac for every part of who he was no longer really knows who Mac is. 

Granted, Bozer is safer that way, but sometimes it hurts a lot. Mac used to be able to tell Boze  _ everything. _ He was the only person who wasn’t family who heard Mac’s secrets, who knew about his magic. 

Because as much as Mac tried to ignore his magic, it’s an essential part of him. No one’s let him use it before, not the way the Phoenix has. Even if Jack complains, and says he doesn’t want Mac doing any of that freaky mumbo-jumbo on him, he knows his partner secretly appreciates the way Mac can summon backup from the world around him. Even if he did have a hard time explaining the pigeons in his mission report to Matty.

Even if it’s hard to get used to being accepted, even just a little, it feels good. Because as much as he wanted to pretend magic didn’t have anything to do with who he was, he was lying to himself because it hurt less than admitting he was forcing himself to pretend. 

The magic is just natural to him. It’s in his blood, in his nature, as much as being a hunter is. It's even in the house itself. The central rowan tree the house is built around is partially sentient, and when Mac lived here by himself, the tree unlocked the house, opened doors, caught things when Mac dropped them, and helped hold his inventions steady while he worked. 

When Mac's not in the house, the tree's just a tree. When he's home, though, it reacts to his magic in such a strong way it sometimes feels like part of who he is as a person. It didn’t used to be this way, but after Grandfather died, Mac thinks the tree sort of latched onto him as a way out of grief, if that's a thing for trees. Just another reason to feel guilty he isn't home more.

The tree used to respond most to Grandfather. Sure, it was fond of Mac, it used to wake him up by tapping his face in the mornings, but after they lost Grandfather, the tree...well, for lack of a better description it’s gotten...clingy.

In a weird way Mac feels like maybe that means he isn't quite gone for good. Sometimes the things the tree does remind him of Grandfather. Like now, when a branch slides over his shoulder and brushes away the tears he didn't even notice.

When Boze moved in, the tree opened the fridge for him the first morning, out of habit. Bozer ran out of the house screaming, until Mac convinced him to come back inside by promising it wouldn't happen again. By now Boze has gotten used to the tree’s helpful nature and actually asks it to hand him kitchen utensils. It won't help stir anything cooking though, too much heat.

Mac’s still had to de-magic the house quite a bit to make it liveable for a human. Some of the charms on it were to prevent humans from being able to see or enter the building itself. Every once in a while Boze runs across a spell Mac forgot or didn't know was even there. Like the one that almost caught him on fire in the kitchen, or the one that kept hiding Bozer's prop knives he brought home for filming because it mistook them for legitimately dangerous weapons. They never found one of those, and Mac ended up paying to replace it, because it was only fair, no matter how much Boze insisted it was no big deal. 

Bozer agreed to move in here in LA because he dreams of becoming a filmmaker. Mac still thinks it’s crazy that all of his scripts are about vampires in some way, even though most humans don’t know they actually exist, and for all that he’s usually pretty accurate. He’s taking care of the house while Mac is gone. Which is more often than not now, with the Coven Wars. 

Mac’s been making excuses for years.  _ Business trip. Project deadline. Missed a connecting flight. Car stalled out and is in a garage. Out of state conference. Giving a presentation. _

“Hey, man, are you ever gonna come outta there?” Bozer is awake now. 

“I’m coming,” Mac answers quietly. He really just wants to go to sleep, but Bozer is going to pester him into at least coming out and saying goodbye before he goes to work. 

“What do you want to eat?”

“I don’t care. Make whatever you’re hungry for.” Mac’s horrible at making decisions. About literally anything. If it’s just him, it’s fine, but if someone else asks him to choose something, he just can’t.

_ What I want is never as important as what everyone else wants. If they’re happy, I’m happy.  _ What if what he wants isn’t what everyone else does, and they’re all miserable? It doesn’t matter to him what movie he and Bozer watch, what they decide to cook for dinner, what hole-in-the-wall diner he and Jack visit at the end of a shift. 

“It’s _your_ turn to pick breakfast, man. What are you hungry for?”

“Not hungry.” Mac feels sick. As much as he wants to ignore all those memories, they’re refusing to go away. And he can’t tell Bozer. It would mean he’d have to tell him everything, and he isn't allowed to. _ Not the real reason and you know it. You can’t tell him because you’re ashamed of what they made you do. Of what they’ve done to you. _

He knows Bozer wouldn’t think any less of him. But he just can’t bring himself to tell anyone. Not now, maybe not ever. Telling someone means it happened. And maybe, if it all stays in his head, he can lock it up and hide it away and forget.

“You’re going to come out here and finish these waffles or I’m going to ask the tree to make you,” Bozer mock-threatens. 

Mac sighs and stands up.  _ I really should eat, I guess. _ He hasn’t had a thing since the beginning of their shift last evening, and his stomach is complaining. He’s still not used to reminding himself to eat on his own. Before, he ate when Michaels said it was okay to. Jack doesn’t do that, so Mac forgets to eat at all. 

“I made the ones you like, with that blackberry sauce!” Bozer shouts, and Mac can’t help the small smile. Bozer’s cooking really is the best. Now he can smell the food...did Bozer leave it unattended? Something smells scorched…

And then the smoke alarm blares, the tree branches in the room start tugging frantically on Mac’s shirt, and he sighs and stands up.  _ Just another morning. This is normal. This is okay. This is good.  _


	10. Choices+Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day :), because this one is kind of short.

Matty’s usually not one for second-guessing herself. In this line of work, no one has that luxury. But pairing Dalton and Mac is one decision she’s starting to wonder if she’ll look back on as one of her worst.

She was hoping that by now, Jack would have gotten comfortable with his new partner. She’s always known Jack isn’t fond of the fae. Back when she was starting, his attitude had frustrated her, mostly because he was abrasive and overbearing. He’d certainly lived up the reputation of the larger-than-life Texan. The only small thing about Jack, Matty had decided early on, was his range of opinions. Jack could be astonishingly narrow-minded about some things, and fae were one of those. Fae aren’t common in the southwest, and Matty figured the only things Jack knew about them came from his family and his teachers. Texans aren’t known for being very welcoming of the Seelie folk. 

But as she got to know him better, Matty realized Jack wasn’t actually as intentionally bigoted or hateful as she’d thought. He didn’t really hate the fae on principle. But he didn’t have any patience for anyone who didn’t pull their own weight. Jack was the sort of person who would give everything he had in him and then some to get the job done, and he couldn’t understand people who didn’t have the same mindset. And the perception he had of the fae was that they were cheaters, who used magic to avoid hard work. 

Matty was really hoping that seeing Mac in action, someone who had the same attitude toward life as Jack did, would break down that idea and that Jack would open up. But they got off to a horrible start and neither of them is recovering from it well.

She gave Jack Mac’s name because she’s legally bound to. If anyone stopped Jack and he couldn’t tell them his fae partner’s name, Mac would be arrested for evasion. But there are few things she regrets more. 

Jack’s incredibly insensitive joke terrified Mac; she could see it even though he was trying to hide his feelings. Matty hasn’t used Mac’s real name once after he gave her his nickname. She’s well aware of how much trauma is associated with it for him, and how bad a flashback she could probably trigger. 

As much as Mac had begged her not to tell anyone about his past, she wishes she could have told Jack. If she had, he would have instantly forgotten any preconceptions he had about fae and the only danger Mac would be in would be being smothered by Jack’s admittedly slightly helicopter parent tendencies. Instead, Jack is pushing Mac harder and faster, and Mac is pushing himself even more than that, desperate to be useful, to earn his place. 

It hurts Matty to see that after everything, Mac still believes he’s worthless unless he’s good at his job. Which is why she’s asked to see him today, before the hunters leave. 

Thunder crashes, rain dripping down the War Room windows. Matty’s always loved seeing the storms from here. She can appreciate the raw power, the way such seemingly small and insignificant things like a drop of water or a breath of wind can become something that can sweep away anything in their path and no one can stop them. People have always called Matty Webber a force of nature. She considers it a compliment to be included in such company. 

She’s surprised that the weather seems to be having the same effect on Mac. She’d sort of expected him to be afraid of the dramatic, chaotic side of nature, but he’s watching the lightning and rain with the same kind of quiet fascination she’s seen when a squirrel built a nest in one of the trees out in the lawn. 

“You like storms, Mac?”

“I know it won’t hurt me unless I don’t respect it.” He smiles at her softly. “Only people who don’t understand storms are afraid of them.” He hands her a paper clip bent into the shape of a lightning bolt. Twisted into the top of it is another shaped like a cloud.

“This is amazing.” Matty sets the wire on her desk, where it joins similar sculptures of a shamrock, a wolf’s head, and a lightbulb. Mac tends to make them while listening to mission briefings and then leave them on the War Room table. Matty would never admit to picking them up and putting them in her pockets before someone throws them away, but she can’t bear to see anyone throw away yet another thing that makes Mac who he is. 

“You need to tell me what’s going on with you and Dalton.” She doesn’t beat around the bush, never has, and she’s fairly sure Mac will appreciate the open honesty. 

“Nothing’s wrong. We’re catching a lot of vamps, we’re getting the job done. We’re doing well, aren’t we?” He sounds almost frightened.  _ He’s so worried about how I’m judging his performance. _

“It’s not that. You two are bagging more wanted vamps than any other patrol team. But I’m worried that you and Dalton aren’t fitting together well on a personal level.” She has no idea who she’ll assign Mac to if he finally caves and decides to tell her he’d like a new partner. Maybe she can convince him to give R&D another go. He’d already invented three new pieces of tac gear in the two and a half weeks he was forcibly put in that department for recovery. 

Mac looks down at his hands. “No one wants to work with a fae, I understand. If he wants a new partner, that’s okay.”

Matty once again wants to wrap this boy in a hug and not let go until he realizes she loves him no matter what he can or can’t do. No matter what he is. But she already knows he won’t let her. “It’s not Dalton I’m worried about. It’s you.”

“I’m okay.” Mac shrugs. “He doesn’t hit me, it’s good.”  _ It’s so horribly sad that THAT is his criteria for judging whether he’s in a good situation. _

She gently puts a hand on his arm. He jumps, but doesn’t pull away. “I know he doesn’t, but his words can hurt too. Are you sure you want to stay with him?”

“I’ll be fine.” Mac looks away from her, fidgeting, clearly wanting this conversation to be over. “We’ll figure things out. I can make it work.”

_ I know you’re good at improvising and getting by on things that don’t exactly work the way they’re supposed to. But that isn’t how partnerships are supposed to be. You shouldn’t be holding your friendship with Jack together with duct tape and paper clips.  _ But Matty doesn’t say any of it. She’s not there with them, in the field. Ultimately, what happens to these two isn’t her choice. It’s Mac’s.


	11. Ankle+Truth

“Our vamps are holed up in the top level of an apartment complex. They’re getting antsy, not sure we have time for calling a raid team.” Jack hopes Phoenix tactical support agrees with him. Those vamps potentially have a human hostage in there.

“All right. Thunderstallion and Tinkerbell, this is your call then.”

Jack’s finally found a suitable code name for his partner. The kid seems to hate it with a passion, but Jack thinks it’s a rather genius move on his part. _Cause he’s fae, and he likes to tinker with stuff. It’s perfect, right?_

“We’re going in.” Jack nods to the kid, who’s half watching Jack, half studying the building.

While the kid expertly picks the lock on a maintenance access door, Jack watches his back. “What’s the problem, Tinkerbell?” The kid hasn’t looked too excited about this mission since he saw the briefing packet.

Maybe it’s because this is their first real mission rather than a patrol. Matty’s seen fit to promote the new kid from probational status to full hunt-cleared agent, and now he and Jack are ready to handle specific operations like this one. Maybe it’s just nerves.

The kid sighs, but glances at Jack. “This building was made before the earthquake code specifications were created, and the owners abandoned it rather than retrofit to meet specs. No one’s gotten around to doing anything about it yet, but because it hasn’t been repaired, it’s probably very unstable, especially on upper levels.”

“You planning on bringing the thing down with them inside?”

“No. I’m saying, we need to be careful going in. There could be a lot of damage that’s happened in there since 1971. I’m surprised it’s still standing.”

The kid’s right about damage. Two floors below the level they figure their vamps are on, the stairwell they’re using is blocked by fallen railings and concrete.

Jack looks at the mangled mess, then at the kid. “There’s another stairwell on the opposite end of the building.” Jack _does_ remember that from the briefing.

The hallway is dark, and each of them takes a side, hugging the walls as much as possible to avoid the creaky boards in the center. Jack switches on his tac flashlight, checking doorways just in case there are vamps in more places than the top floor. He doesn’t want to be caught unaware.

They're paying so much attention to what might be lurking above them, they miss what's below. The kid crumples with a sharp, surprised gasp. Jack glances at him, following the line of his curled body to where his leg is trapped at the ankle in what appears to be a heating vent that no longer has a cover.

“How’d you manage to find the only hole in the floor, man?” Jack asks in a whisper, bending over to help the kid get his leg unstuck. The way he’s fallen, his ankle’s trapped at an awkward angle. He’s got some pretty nasty scratches when Jack works his ankle free, and... _oh shit. Blood!_

“Get a move on, Tinkerbell!” The kid gives him a hurt look, wide eyes even wider, but says nothing. _At least he’s not the kind to talk back._ There’s something about this kid that doesn’t add up. He’s nervous and almost frightened around people, but he completely loses any shakiness in the middle of an actually threatening situation. It’s exactly the opposite of almost every newbie Jack has ever worked with.

Jack can hear the hisses and screeches from the floors above them. They don’t have much time. “We can’t outrun them!”

“Vampires can’t swim,” the kid pants. _Everyone knows that!_

“How’s that gonna help us?”

“Pool, out back.” _Now I get it. But I think I liked this better when I didn’t know what we were doing._

The windows out back open onto small balconies. The kid shoves the window open and pushes himself through, flinching when his bad ankle collides with the sill. Jack follows.

The kid’s standing absolutely still on the balcony. Jack’s about to ask what he think he’s doing when he sees it. Three black shapes hanging down from the balcony above, fangs gleaming in the moonlight, dripping saliva. Ready to pounce.

“Hey, Tink, duck!” Jack swings his whip with a sharp snap, slashing it across the vamps’ faces. They shriek in surprise and pain and swish back over the railing. But it’s only a temporary reprieve.

If he and the kid hesitate, they’re going to die. “Jump!” Jack flings himself over the railing, and he feels Tinkerbell beside him doing the same. _This is gonna hurt._...

Jack twists himself to land without as much impact, still hitting the water painfully roughly with his shoulder and hip. Beside him, the kid yelps sharply, then gasps. Jack grabs him by the shirt once they start coming up; he’s pretty sure the kid inhaled some water.

They can’t get out yet, not until backup arrives. Jack can see the vamps circling the water, but they can’t get to the hunters. Contrary to what a lot of humans believe, vamps can’t fly. It’s an illusion created by their enhanced speed, which allows them to run on walls and sometimes even close to the ceilings. But they can’t get to the center of the pool.

The two tread water for what feels like forever before Jack hears gates clang and a tac team bursts in, rounding up the vamps and finally making it safe for the two hunters to come back to solid ground.

Jack’s grateful. His legs are about as responsive as jelly, the pool felt icky with all kinds of scum that’s washed in from the rains, since no one bothers to clean it now, and the water is unheated and chilly, even on a balmy California night. _I’m going straight for a long, hot shower the second we get back._ He’s not really sure why so many of his missions with Tinkerbell seem to end with them both needing to wash off something nasty, sometimes something Jack decides he’s better off not knowing the name of.

Tinkerbell is standing too, breathing shakily and limping a little, biting his lip every time he puts much pressure on his injured ankle, but otherwise apparently fine. He doesn’t say a thing the entire ride back to Phoenix. Maybe he thinks Jack hated his plan more than he actually did.

“You know, that was a pretty decent save back there. Minus the fact that that pool was like swimming in a dumpster. I’m gonna go take a shower. I feel like a walking sewer drain,” Jack grumbles, but he can’t bring himself to be too mad. _If the kid hadn’t known about that pool, we’d be a couple of bodies in the morgue right now._

He knows better than to ask the kid if he’s going to want to clean up too. It seems like no matter what they get into on hunts, Tinkerbell refuses to use the locker rooms. He’d rather wait an hour or more and go home, wherever that is. Once, the time he actually climbed into a dumpster to get some of the ties off trash bags for something he was making, Matty insisted on him taking a shower before debriefing them in the War Room. But that’s the only time Jack’s ever known him to clean up in the locker room. _Guess it’s not good enough for him. Or he’s got some hang-up about modesty. Or something._

Tinkerbell doesn’t say anything in response to Jack’s vague compliment; he looks slightly sick. Maybe he got more water in him than Jack thought. “Hey, don’t puke in here, okay? It smells bad enough without adding that to the mix.” The kid nods and rests his head in his hands for the rest of the trip.

Jack takes a shower that’s probably over twenty minutes long, and he still doesn’t feel like he got all the slime off his skin. When he walks into the War Room, only Matty is there. Tinkerbell only had a few scratches, it shouldn’t have taken that long to get him patched up. _He wasn’t in the locker room; where is he? Did he breathe in more of that water than I thought? Was there some freaky disease in that guck?_ Jack suddenly wishes he’d taken a longer shower.

“Where’s Tinkerbell?”

Matty groans at Jack’s nickname, under her breath but he knows her well enough to hear it. “Still in medical. Cracked ankles aren’t as easy to fix as a few scratches and bruises.”

“What?” Jack can feel himself exploding. “He didn’t say anything about it!”

What did you expect, Dalton?” Matty’s voice is cold, angrier than Jack’s  heard her in a long time. “You’ve been giving him hell for weeks about not being good enough.”

“I never meant for him to do something like this!”

“You know absolutely nothing about that boy.” Matty glares Jack down until he sits, unwillingly. “He asked me not to tell you anything, but I’ve seen enough of this. Now he’s hurt because of his own stubborn pride and your idiotic behavior. Do you know where he was, before we recruited him? The last agency he worked for used his name to control him, Jack. And when you made that stupid joke, you terrified him.”

“I would never…” Jack’s heard of this. It’s protocol for a fae’s partner or handler to know the name, just in case of the worst, but some agencies take advantage. He can only imagine what’s been done to a kid like Mac, just because he’s not able to fight back or refuse. “Oh shit.” That haunted look in Mac’s eyes, the way he flinches whenever Jack speaks directly to him…“I need to go talk to him.”

“He didn’t want anyone to know, Jack.” Matty looks away, voice shaking slightly. “Not only is he terrified someone’s going to do it again, that’s a horribly humiliating thing for a fae to endure. To have had every bit of control taken away, to be forced to do whatever they wanted him to, even to kill…”

“I really messed up, didn’t I?” God knows what Mac’s been subjected to for months, maybe years. And then Jack went and acted like an insensitive jerk because he assumed Mac's withdrawn silence was the stubbornness of some entitled kid.

“He never wanted you to find out. He’ll be angry. And hurt.”

“We’re partners. He needs to know I’m never, ever going to do that to him. He needs to be able to trust me.” If there’s a binding magic, Jack is going to swear on it that he’ll never, ever use Mac’s real name again. Not even as a joke. "I have to go talk to him."

"He won't be there. He's already called his housemate to come pick him up. Probably thinks I don't know about it too, judging by the fact he's leaving medical without signing out."

“Matty, please, this is important. What’s his home address?”

“Jack, that’s not a good idea. It’s probably the only place he still feels safe.” Matty doesn’t look angry now. She looks sad and sympathetic.

“Which is exactly why I should talk to him there. Let him have this on his own turf. I messed up, and I have to make it right, and it should be someplace he’s comfortable doing this. Not somewhere where he feels afraid of me.”

Matty nods slowly. “You may be right. Here.” She writes on a scrap of paper and hands it over. “He’s a good person, Jack. Try not to screw this up.”

Jack clocks out and heads straight for his car. He pulls out of the driveway, heading the opposite direction from the kid’s house. It’s not a mistake. He has one stop to make first.


	12. Apology+Jacket

Tinkerbell’s house is way outside town.  _ He doesn’t have a car. Does he walk here every day? _ It’s in a part of the city that for some reason has never been developed. It’s like a tiny scrap of wilderness in the middle of suburbs. 

_ I don’t remember this being here a few years ago. And I swear I used to patrol this area when I was a junior hunter.  _

The only house in the entire area is a strange-looking half wood, half stone building. It’s like Frank Lloyd Wright built a treehouse. Well, not exactly a treehouse, since it isn’t raised off the ground, but there’s an actual  _ tree _ growing right through the center of the building, branches spreading over the roof. 

_ Well, that’s a fae house if I ever saw one. _ Actually Jack has never seen a fae house in his life before, but if he had to imagine what they’d look like, he’d certainly have something like this in mind.

Well, almost like this, because there’s a strange mechanical contraption watering a garden near the door, some wires and pieces of glass and stone that look like a sort of combination sundial, wind chime, and weather vane hanging from one of the tree's branches, and there are parts of an old vehicle all over the yard, repurposed into small rain barrels and vegetable planters.

Jack had never thought of the fae as being particularly mechanical. He’d always pictured tree-huggers in sixties hippie clothing who spent as much time in nature as possible and avoided all things manmade. But it seems like even off the clock, Tinkerbell’s using anything he can get his hands on to make whatever it is he needs. 

Jack knocks on the door, with no response. He tugs the handle, just to see if it’s open, although most hunters aren’t the sort to accidentally leave a door unlocked. 

The door is indeed locked, and Jack decides to try walking around the back. He passes several more odd inventions, which he’s not entirely sure of the use for. He’s surprised to see that the back porch is actually a sort of patio, overlooking a small pond. 

The kid’s sitting on the porch, next to a fire pit, and it doesn’t look like he’s aware Jack is there. In fact, it doesn’t look like he’s awake.

“Hello?” He doesn’t so much as look up, and Jack’s starting to get worried.  _ What was in that water? _ “Hey, man, you’re scaring me, wake up!” He steps up onto the porch and reaches to shake the kid’s shoulder. In retrospect, that’s a mistake.

A tree branch whips out of nowhere, smacking Jack across the face and chest hard enough to send him reeling backward. Another one wraps around his wrist. “What the hell!” Jack shoves at the branch, but it’s totally useless. The thing is more solid than handcuffs.

Another branch pins his other hand, and a third begins to wrap around his chest. Jack vaguely notices, as he’s continuing to flail at the stupid plant, that more are shaking the kid awake, and he’s stumbling to his feet, favoring his casted leg and blinking sleepily. 

“Hey, could use a little help here!” Jack’s pretty sure this freaky monster plant is about to strangle him. He would never admit to anyone that he had nightmares about sentient trees after seeing  _ The Lord of the Rings _ , but it’s still very high on his list of “Ways I don’t want to die.” It’s only topped by “fire”, “mummies” and, of course “vampire turning”. 

“I’m sorry, it thought you were going to hurt me.” Tinkerbell’s pulling the branches away and slapping them gently. “Hey, it’s just Jack. He works with me.”

“Wh-what is going on here?”

“It’s...the tree’s part of the house. It’s been in my family, well, my fae side, for generations. The house changes, the tree doesn’t. It’s sort of a family guardian.”

“Well, it’s doing it’s job a little too well. I came up here to check on you and it tried to kill me!” Jack pushes the last branches away, and he could swear the tree droops a little when he finished his rant.  _ Good. Be insulted. I don’t like you either. _

The kid stops fussing with the tree and looks at Jack in growing confusion. “How did you find me?” It's almost like he just realized Jack isn't supposed to know about this place.

“Matty. She was kind of concerned when you skipped out on the good doctors back there. I figured I’d come up and make sure you didn’t get the bird flu from that water or something.”

There’s a faint hint of a smile on Tinkerbell’s face. “That’s actually not how the bird flu spreads, Jack.”

“Not the point. Point is, we were all worried. Next time, at least tell us you’re gonna bolt.” Jack grins. “Then I don’t have to come hunt you down and get half-strangled by your guard tree for my trouble.” Jack backs a little farther away from the now-unmoving branches.

“Sorry. I fell asleep and didn’t hear you. They gave me painkillers and those don’t really mix well with being fae. This time at least they just made me tired. Usually I end up getting really hyper.”

“No wonder you avoid medical.” The kid sighs. 

“There wasn’t anything more they could do, and I didn’t want to stay. It feels wrong in there and I can’t sleep.” He sits down again, slowly. “I’ll be fine. I don’t need to go back, really.”  _ He thinks I came to drag him back there and make him stay put. _

Jack sits down next to him and puts a hand gently on the cast. It looks like someone's already drawn on it, a vacuum and the words "get well soon so I can make you clean this house and not feel guilty-Boze" scribbled on in Sharpie. “I heard about your ankle. You should have said something out there. I could have wrapped it or...”

“There wasn’t really time.” The kid shrugs. “If we’d stopped to deal with it, we’d have gotten sucked dry.”

Jack shakes his head. “You were treading water for almost half an hour with a busted ankle. How were you not screaming halfway through?”

“It’s not a full break, the bone’s just cracked. I thought I was supposed to just suck it up and deal with it. You said so.” Coming from anyone else that would have had a snarky, sarcastic tone, but the way the kid says it it’s a statement of fact. He truly thought that’s what Jack wanted.

“Not when it’s broken! What were you thinking? Did you think if you said anything I’d just force you to keep on going anyway?”

The kid says nothing, but his eyes widen and Jack sees his shoulders go stiff and rigid. 

“I’m never going to do that to you, and I’m never gonna let anyone else do it again.” Jack says. “I’ll swear on whatever kind o’ binding magic you want, if you do that kinda thing.” He glances at the kid, who’s started to shake. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Matty told you?” Tinkerbell looks at him, betrayal and pain in his wide blue eyes. 

“I’m glad she did! She should have told me sooner, you should have told me, because then I wouldn’t have been so damn hard on you!” Jack stops, because... _ oh shit, is he crying? _  The kid's eyes are glassy and wet, and as Jack watches, he turns his head away, blushing furiously. 

He angrily wipes away the tears streaking down his face with his sleeve. “You weren’t supposed to know. It was okay. I could take it. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”

“She told me because I’d been a complete ass to you, man, and she wasn’t going to let it slide any longer. Why didn’t you just…” Jack trails off.  _ Why didn’t he just tell me? Because Matty was right; I was accusing him of being weak or too delicate for the field. _

The kid hugs his knees to his chest, still shaking, avoiding Jack’s eyes. “How...how much did she tell you?”

“Just enough. That they were using your name and you couldn’t leave.” Jack reaches for the kid; he wants to hug him because damn, Tinkerbell looks so broken, so lost, so lonely. But the kid just flinches away. Jack figures he has every right to. “I’m sorry for what I said. About your name. I didn’t know…”

“Please, don’t.” He shudders. “Don’t talk about it.”

“Ok.” 

Now that he knows to look for it, he can see the fear, the pain, the humiliation in those wide blue eyes. Jack has heard a lot about fae, most of it none too flattering, but there’s one thing anyone who’s taken a social studies class knows, even if they daydreamed through most of it and drew horses and Colt handguns in the margins of their notebooks.

_ Fae consider the invoking of their secret name by anyone to whom it hasn’t been freely given a form of rape. _ Jack hadn’t been even close to controlling him with it, but still, after months or years of hearing that name only in connection with another order, another forced action, the kid must have hated hearing anyone say it at all. 

Jack feels sick.  _ What have I done to him? _ He’d barely been in the same room with the kid for two minutes and flippantly used his name as a joke. Granted, that was before he knew Tinkerbell was fae, but still, when he found out, he hadn’t even apologized. He’d forgotten all about how much the kid would feel hurt and violated. The only thing Jack was focused on then was his own anger and frustration.  _ I didn’t want to work with a fae. And really, he’s the one who should have been demanding to be reassigned. _

Jack goes back to the GTO. He pulls the crumbling cardboard box out of the backseat and digs through a stack of faded polaroids before finding what he’s looking for. He knocks on the front door this time and the kid opens it. It looks kind of like the tree is undoing the lock. Or is the lock.  _ Okay, that’s a little strange… _

Jack steps inside and holds out a battered leather jacket that’s seen quite a few patches. It’s still in good shape, though, and heaven knows the kid needs one.

“You needed a jacket. It seemed to suit you better than black.” Jack shrugs. “You didn’t really strike me as the goth rocker kind of hunter. And even if you were, having you trying to imitate my style, well, you’d just embarrass yourself.”

“This wasn’t necessary.” The kid’s voice is stilted, too formal for partners who’ve been working together for over a month. Jack laughs a bit to cover how uncomfortable he is with how impersonal the kid’s being. 

“Ah, no big deal. It was my old man’s, he’d be glad someone was using it. God knows it’s too small for me to ever wear.”

The kid hangs the jacket by the door. “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day and I’m really tired. Could you...”

“Consider me gone.” Jack steps out.  _ Man, I messed up. Now he hates me. And he ought to, cause I was a stupid, insensitive bastard who ran my mouth off before my brain. As usual.  _  Jack kicks at a tuft of grass in the lawn, then apologizes, because after Incident Tree, who knows what around here is going to hate him?


	13. Cast+Kitchen

It’s harder to sleep with a cast than Mac expected. Maybe that’s because the past few times he’s had one, he’d always been exhausted from missions and sleeping was the first thing his body wanted. Now, he’s not so bone-dead tired every day, and he only dozes fitfully until Bozer comes home.

If he’s being honest with himself, part of the reason he can’t sleep is that he feels just a little bit guilty for being so angry at Jack and Matty. He’s sort of glad he won’t have to see them again for a while; since it’s a mandatory six weeks before he can return to work, even though he’d told the medical staff he’s used to going back to work after just four weeks for a break. Fae heal fairly quickly, so he’ll probably take the cast off a couple weeks early anyway. Maybe he’ll use the time to finally fix what’s wrong with Bozer’s car, or to put a new roof on the house, or maybe clean like Boze has been pestering him to.

He knows all Matty and Jack wanted to do was help. Still, he can’t help feeling betrayed. He’s tried everything to make sure Jack never found out about any of it. He didn’t talk about his past whenever Jack tried to bring it up at breakfasts, he never complained when Jack didn’t use the nickname he’d asked him to, because anything was better than being called “Angus”, and he never, ever took a shower in the locker room, or even changed there, because there’s no hiding his back. If Jack saw the scars, he’d ask too many questions.

But now, in spite of everything, Jack knows. Mac wishes Matty hadn’t said anything. _She should have trusted me. I was okay. If I didn’t want her to tell him, she shouldn’t have._ And then he wonders why he’s even surprised or upset. _No one’s ever cared what I want. Why should it be any different now? And why does it matter so much to me?_

He’s honestly surprised no one stopped him when he skipped out on medical and called Bozer to come get him. He’s seen enough of the Phoenix to know they’re going to know about any calls made from their agents, and they definitely knew he snuck out of medical without being cleared. They had to know he wasn’t going to get far with his ankle messed up, someone could easily have taken him back and cuffed him to the bed (not that he wouldn’t be able to get out of that in about half a minute too, but they could have tried). But they let him go.

He’s not sure whether he should be happy about it or upset. Maybe they respect that he doesn’t want to stay there, that he can take care of himself, _because I can._ Unless it’s because he’s just that useless, maybe they don’t care what happens to him.

The thoughts chase each other around his head like fox kits until Bozer comes back and Mac limps out to the kitchen to meet him. It looks like he stopped at the grocery store on the way home; he always tries to get Mac’s favorite things to eat whenever Mac’s home for any length of time, especially if it’s for an injury (which is usually always the reason). Mac helps him unpack the food, eating a few of the dried apricots while he’s doing it.

“I was planning on making goulash tonight,” Bozer says, digging in the cupboards for a soup pot. Mac grins. It’s been one of his favorites ever since his team dealt with a vamp infestation in a small neighborhood that was mostly Hungarians. Who seemed very, very willing to believe in the existence of vampires, _which makes sense, since Transylvania used to be part of Hungary, and humans weren’t wrong about it being a hotbed of vamp activity in the 1800s,_ and also very willing to feed the people helping get rid of the danger.

“So, I didn’t ask because I hadn’t had my morning coffee yet, and I didn’t want to have this conversation decaffeinated and grouchy, but what _did_ you do to your ankle?” Bozer asks as he starts browning chunks of meat in a frying pan.

“Fell off a ladder,” Mac says quickly.

“What were you doing on a ladder?”

“Uh...readjusting lights.” Mac’s had all day to come up with a cover story. He could have thought of something better than this. But he’s been chasing his tail about Matty and Jack all day instead.

‘What?”

“We couldn’t have them shining right on the project. It was photosensitive, the light would have ruined it.”

“Whatever you say.” Bozer doesn’t look convinced. He digs into the cupboard and finds the paprika, shaking a generous amount onto the meat. “I still think you’re just throwing yourself off roofs trying to fly.”

“That was one time and the physics was sound.”

Bozer sighs. “I don’t think that made your grandpa or the doctors feel any better when you kept telling them that. You started explaining the formulas and I think that one doctor thought you had brain damage.”

“He should have known I was fine, you can’t calculate gravitational pull and lift and explain the differences between Bernoulli’s law and the way a wing actually reduces air pressure if you have brain damage.” Mac starts slicing carrots and cauliflower, leaning against the counter to take pressure off his leg. It’s not really painful in the sharp way it was earlier, but it feels swollen, and his entire foot is throbbing. _Probably should sit down, but also probably not gonna._

“I think he probably thought you were speaking gibberish,” Bozer laughs. He finishes cooking the meat and begins slicing onions and potatoes next to Mac.

It’s rare anymore that they have time to cook together. Mac’s sometimes late in the mornings and Boze is already gone, leaving a note on the table that tells Mac what kind of breakfast is waiting in the fridge to be reheated. Even if Mac is home on time, he’s often too tired to be much help. Once he poured salt into the pancakes mistaking it for sugar, and then spent nearly ten minutes trying to figure out why Boze put the salt in the same kind of container as the sugar, before remembering he’d done it himself when he needed the salt box for something he’d been making the week before.

Cooking is the one thing Mac’s never been able to master. It should be simple, Boze says, just follow the recipes and things will turn out. But there’s always a better way to do it, something that makes it simpler, or faster, or just more interesting. And also tends to be inedible, set off the smoke alarm, or explode all over the counter and cupboards.

When Bozer first moved in he’d made a rule within the first twenty-four hours. Only he was allowed to cook meals until Mac learned to actually use the cookbooks. And for the first week, he’d made literally everything vegetarian. Mac had to explain that fae don’t necessarily not eat meat; they’re as much connected to wolves and bears and hawks as to deer, squirrels, and rabbits. Nature isn’t always vegetarian, and neither are fae. Mac had always just avoided the meat in the school cafeteria because it smelled too questionable.

He still doesn’t like the idea of animals or plants that are raised on massive commercial farms, so Boze has found a lot of places that sell organic vegetables and fruit and ethically raised meat. Thankfully, those are pretty easy to find in California, but less fortunately, aren’t often open when Mac’s day begins and ends. Boze never complains about being the one who always has to go get their food, as long as Mac pays for half of it. Mac’s not sure what he did to get such a considerate roommate, but he’s grateful.

He wishes he could tell Bozer about all of this mess. He wants to be able to tell _someone_ , but the only people who know all his secrets are Matty, and now Jack, and he can’t talk to either one of them about this because they _are_ the problem. Boze has always, always been there with advice, or a listening ear, but there’s no way Mac can even talk his way around this situation and make it something he can tell his friend. If he tells Bozer about the name thing, he’ll have to explain why he was under a contract, and that would mean telling him about vamps and hunters and the nightlife, which he can’t do. And even if he could, he doesn’t want to see the pity and concern he knows would be all Boze would feel. Mac isn’t weak, he’s not a child who needs to go running to his friend for comfort after the bullies hit him.

“What’s bothering you?” Boze asks suddenly.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve been cutting the same spot on that carrot for five minutes.” Mac looks down. Sure enough, his knife is slicing absolutely nothing, and the carrot is barely three slices shorter than it was when he picked it up.

“Leg hurts.” It’s the truth, and it’s all he can manage to come up with.

“Then sit down.” Boze pulls over a chair, and Mac sits reluctantly, handing over the knife. “And tell me what’s really wrong, ‘cause I know you, and you could be bleeding to death with your skull cracked open and you’d never admit anything hurt.” Mac sighs.

“New partner at work. He’s kind of nosy, and he went to my boss and asked her a lot of questions, and she told him everything, and I got mad at him when I found out, but I think he might have actually really cared about me.”

“Wait, did he find out you’re fae?” Boze asks. “Does he have your name?”

“Umm...I kind of had to give it to him...for the job. They won’t let fae work if they don’t give their names now, you remember the law that passed. But I don’t think he’s going to use it against me.” Jack had actually offered to swear on the Binding that he wouldn’t. Mac told him there wasn’t any magic like that, because if he’d told the truth, Jack, the persistent idiot, wouldn’t have left until Mac did the spell. And the Binding is not a game. It’s for life.

Bozer sighs. “Mac, promise me you won’t get yourself into something bad, okay? If this new partner starts acting funny, you don’t hesitate to come to me, okay? If...if they ever...If anyone ever used your name on you, I’d mess them up, you hear me? I don’t want that to ever happen to you, ever.”

Mac thinks he might cry. He scrubs at his eyes with his hands, hard, trying to hold back tears. _I wanted to tell you. I still want to tell you. I needed your help so much back then, and I couldn’t do anything because you can’t know what I do. And everything you’re afraid of has already happened, and you don’t know. I’m already broken, already ruined. And I’m ruining everything else too._

“Mac? You okay?”

“Yeah. Those onions were really strong, that’s all.” _I’m ruining our friendship because I can’t tell you the truth, I drove Jack away, and I’m angry with Matty. There’s something wrong with me; I push everyone who cares about me away. Or they just disappear._

“I didn’t think they were that bad, and I was the one cutting them up.” Boze frowns. “You’ve got to stop doing this to me. You come home, and you’re hurt, or you lock yourself in your room for hours, or you have nightmares that sound like they’re straight from one of my horror scripts.”

“I’m okay.”

Bozer leans down and puts his hands on Mac’s shoulders. “Listen. We’re brothers, okay, man? You know you can come to me with anything. Anything, and I will never, ever judge you for it. But I get if you don’t want to talk to me about some things, because we live together and you don’t want to make things weird or stressful. But you have to talk to someone. Mac, I can’t always be here for you, as much as I want to be. So you gotta start finding other people you can trust too. Because you need someone to talk to about whatever this is.”

_I did, and then they hurt me and I pushed them away. You talk about trust like it’s easy. Maybe for humans it is. But for fae, it’s the hardest thing in the world._


	14. Blood+Knife

Jack sits across the van from Mac (he’s trying to remember to call the kid that since he got back from medical leave, but it’s hard). The kid’s playing with his paperclips again, bending one into what looks like the emblem of the _Colmillo Largo_ coven.

This is going to be a big bust, one of the biggest since the start of the war. Patty’s gotten wind of conflicting rumors, some saying that the Blood Oath coven are planning a major assault on the _Colmillo Largo_ , others saying the exact opposite, that the Blood Oath are the ones being targeted. Jack spent most of last week down at the Chrysalis with her, sorting through the list of names and deciding which could be trusted. Unfortunately, it seems that sources Jack would almost bet his life on are on wildly different sides of the story. No one knows for sure what's happening. 

Jack and the kid are currently en route, along with tactical support, to the location of the _Colmillo Largo_ ’s main gathering place. Every coven meets monthly during the new moon phase, a time for members to regroup and share information. It’s the safest time for humans to be out, since the vamps generally aren’t roaming the city then. But it also means they’re consolidated in one place, with leadership, who are usually skittish and hard to track down, coming out of cover.

If the rumors are true, either way, this is a major escalation. So far, the wars have been, in vampire terms at least, controlled. No major assaults on either coven, just small skirmishes over territory. If that changes, Jack is fairly certain it will mean the end for the nightlife as he’s known it. Because there’s no way to hide a full-scale vamp war from humans.

 _Colmillo Largo_ has its meeting headquarters in an abandoned mall in the heart of their territory. The team needs to clear the building before sunset, because if they’re inside when the vamps start showing up, things won’t be pretty. No vamp will believe a full tactical team of hunters is here trying to protect them.

Patty’s intel says the attack is a bombing. Jack has no idea how a member of the Blood Oath coven could have got far enough in _Largo_ territory to carry something like that out, but they can’t afford to just dismiss this as a hoax. If they do and they’re wrong, there will be no more hiding for the nightlife. Jack saw the fear in Patty's usually dead-calm eyes when she told him about all this. He hasn't seen that much raw emotion in her face since...since her last op as a hunter, when that psycho they were chasing sank his fangs in her throat. If Patty is worried, everyone should be.

The mall is three floors high and over a mile long. It’s a nightmare to clear for explosives. Dogs are no good, since they go crazy over the blood scent vamps leave and can’t be counted on to sniff out anything. So it’s an in-person, floor by floor sweep.

It takes over three hours to clear the first floor. That’s unacceptable, but the team can’t work any faster. Every section of ductwork, every service hallway, every locked-up storefront, has to be searched. There's no telling how big an explosive it might be, or what kind. 

By the time they reach the second floor, Jack’s frazzled and starting to see things. So are the rest of the team. One of the techs mistakes the escalator motor for a bomb housing, and sends them all into high alert before admitting it’s a false alarm.

It seems like the stress is beginning to get to Tinkerbell as well. He keeps looking out the windows at the neighboring buildings. Then, halfway through the sweep, he just freezes, staring. Jack follows his gaze, but the building he’s fixated on looks empty, deserted.

“See something?”

“No. No, that’s impossible.” The kid’s shaking his head.

“What?”

“Nothing.” The kid shrugs. “Probably nothing.”

“You can’t _say_ things like that on an op, Tinkerbell.” Jack’s nerves are already strung to the breaking point, and this isn’t helping.

“I thought I saw someone move. In one of those windows.”

“Well, intel says this is a bombing hit, not a sniper, but it’s worth checking out anyway.” Jack motions the tac team’s leader over; they only have a couple hours left until sunset and this building is massive. “Keep clearing this place. Tinkerbell and I are gonna check on something.”

“Got it.” The man goes back to his team, and Jack and the kid step out into the lengthening shadows.

At first Jack’s sure this is a snipe hunt. The floor is covered in dust, the only footprints are theirs. And then he sees the shape at the window. Someone settling a sniper rifle into place. The movement is far too slow to be vamp. _That’s a human. What the hell?_

“Jack, that’s Kevin Michaels.” The kid is shaking. Jack vaguely remembers hearing that name from Matty, when she explained the kid's former situation in more detail. Leader of the team Mac was on when he was being controlled. _Shit. If he says anything to the kid…_

“Why don’t you get outta here, I’ll handle this.”

“I’ll be okay.” Tinkerbell’s rolling something in his hands, stuffing it into his ears. “I won’t be able to hear him, but I’ll still get you through the comms.” His whisper is awkwardly louder now.

 _I mean, that was only half of why I was worried._ Honestly, Jack’s concerned the kid’s gonna choke. _That man made his life a living hell. I wouldn’t blame him if he froze up._

“Drop the gun! Put your hands up!” Jack shouts. Michaels starts to swing around, to take aim at them, but one shot from Jack smashes the rifle useless, and the man lifts his hands theatrically.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the Phoenix Foundation’s golden boys. I’m surprised to hear you’ve been so cooperative for them, Angus.”

“He can’t hear you,” Jack snaps.

Michaels looks disappointed for a moment, then smirks. “No matter. I’d like to know, though, how _are_ you getting him to cooperate so willingly?”

Jack wants to drop the man then and there, but if he’s dead, this whole bizzare situation will never be cleared up. “None of your business. Now, I’m the one with the gun, I get to ask the questions. What are you doing here?”

“Same as you.”

“I doubt it, or you’d be inside clearing that mall. Where’s the rest of your team?”

“Where do you think?”

“At the Blood Oath’s site.” Jack’s beginning to get the picture. “Patty didn’t get conflicting rumors. Both were false. The covens aren’t going after each other, but you’re going to make it look like they did.”

“There will be no more of this senseless silence; no more covering it up, no more hiding. The world will see these bloodthirsty monsters for what they really are.”

“You want to expose the nightlife. So the humans will hunt them out of existence.” Jack’s heard a lot of crazy in his life, but he thinks this might be vying for top of the list.

“They killed my entire family. They deserve to burn, every one of them. Even the ones you claim are innocent, they can make killers.” Michaels’s smile is insane. “When they’re all gone, the world will be a better place. And no one else understands that. Not even the other hunters. Not even my own agency. They should, but they refuse to see the truth.”

“This war is already out of control. You do this, and thousands more humans are going to die. It’s going to become a witch hunt.” Jack can only imagine the apocalypse that could unfold if the majority of humans started to believe in vampires’ real existence. “You’re going to kill the _Largo’_ s leader and pin it on Blood Oath.”

“He’s not alone. Michaels isn’t that good a shot. He's just backup.” Mac is shaking, but he sounds confident.

“Who are you here with?” Jack snaps.

Tinkerbell answers for him. “Probably Riverdon. She’s Silver Blade's best sniper. And this building is a harder target than the Blood Oath’s site.”

“Where is she? Take us there or I’m gonna put three in your skull, so help me,” Jack growls, taking a step toward Michaels. And then a bullet smashes into the wall just inches from his head.

“She’s already found us!” Jack yells, diving for cover behind one of the central pillars in the room. He can see the woman near the back stairwell, her handgun gleaming as she scans the room. Michaels isn’t anywhere in view, but Jack does see the woman hesitate, then home in on his location. Michaels must have signalled her.

What she doesn’t know is that Jack’s got some tricks up his sleeve. Or more accurately, some of Mac’s tricks. The kid’s doing the same thing Jack did, except he’s a pillar farther back. For which Jack is grateful; he won’t be Riverdon’s first target. “Hey Tinkerbell,” Jack hisses over the comms, “let her get close and then use that light thingy on her. I’m gonna try and catch her off guard.”

Jack waits until he’s certain he can close the distance fast, then whispers, “Now!” The kid pulls out the sun-simulating flashlight he’s been working on and aims it directly at the woman’s face.

In the dim building, the effect is blinding, unless you’re preparing, and Riverdon definitely wasn’t. Jack leans out from behind the pillar and takes a clean shot, clipping the sniper’s shoulder. Riverdon shouts in pain, and Jack lunges for the gun she’s suddenly lowered.

“Well, looks like your hunting career is over,” Jack snaps as the woman continues to struggle. He twists her arms behind her back and begins cuffing her. When she tries to head-butt him, he slams back into her just as hard, and she collapses, out cold.

“Jack, look out!”

He was so focused on the woman with the gun that he missed Michaels’s knife. The man’s coming up behind him and he’s got a clear aim at Jack. And then a pale blur is in between them, and Jack’s brain takes just a second too long to catch on.

The kid gasps, stumbling a little, grabbing for the handle of the knife now deep in his side. _It looks like he’s trying to keep hold of it, keep Michaels from pulling it back out._ But the handle is too slick with blood, and Mac loses his grip.

When Michaels pulls out the knife, there’s a sudden splatter of blood, and Mac stumbles, clutching at the wound and making small keening whimpers. Michaels’s smile is sadistic as he yanks Mac back against him, knife laid dangerously close against the kid’s throat.

“You leave him alone, you son of a bitch!” Jack shouts.

“He’s just a fae. Don’t tell me you actually care about this little brat,” Michaels snaps. “He’s only loyal to the people who know how to use him.” He removes one of the small pieces of cloth Mac was using to plug his ears. “ _Angus, Aeelen.”_

 _Come with me._ Tinkerbell's whole body goes stiff, the struggling replaced by a blank passivity. Michaels shoots Jack an almost triumphant look. “I’m walking out of here now. You follow me, you try anything, and he’s dead.” He wraps his other arm around Mac’s body, putting pressure directly on the wound. Mac whimpers, and Jack feels a cold pit in his stomach. _The kid never, ever shows how hurt he is._

Michaels takes a step backward, and Mac follows, but the floor is uneven and his foot drops slightly, apparently sending a jolt through his injured side. With a soft moan, he goes completely limp and collapses to the floor.

Jack doesn’t focus on how much pain his partner’s in. He focuses on his aim, and the clear shot he now has to put two bullets in Michaels’s chest. The man drops like a rock, falling partially on top of Mac, who doesn’t quite have the strength or awareness to squirm out of the way in time.

Jack’s not sure if they were kill shots or not, but at the moment he doesn’t care. Jack may be a soldier, but he’s always felt remorse over almost anyone he’s had to kill. Looking down at this man, Jack doesn’t think he’ll have a single nightmare if Michaels turns out to be dead. Unless it’s seeing this face behind the hands that have done so much damage to Mac.

He pulls the guy’s body off Mac. The kid’s blinking, disoriented, hands scrabbling frantically at the spreading patch of blood on his shirt.

“What the hell were you thinking? You coulda got killed!” Jack shouts, before he takes in how pale Mac is, how much his hands are shaking. “Oh man, this ain’t good.” He needs to get a better look at the wound, see how serious this is. Medical will be en route, they must have heard what was happening over comms, but the kid may not have that long.

"No, leave me alone!" Mac's eyes are ferally panicked. He shoves Jack's hands away from the hem of his shirt.

"I'm trying to help you!" The kid is just out of it from pain and blood loss. He probably doesn’t know Jack isn't the guy who just stabbed him in the side.

"No!" Mac pulls harshly away from Jack, clutching at the edges of his shirt. "I-I can take care of it. Please go."

“I’m not going anywhere, kid.” But Jack does back off, because the more Mac struggles, the more damage he’s going to do to that wound.

Mac bends to try and get a better look at the injury, then straightens up fast, a soft, keening cry slipping past his gritted teeth. He coughs, and when he pulls his hand back, it's covered in blood that wasn't there a minute ago. There's more spattering his lips.

Jack can't watch this any longer. There's no way the kid is going to be able to take care of this himself.   _Why did he think he could? Was this really the kind of thing they'd leave him to fend for himself with?_ He’d like to empty the rest of his clip into both the agents on the floor.

“Listen. We don't fix this, you're gonna die.” Jack rips into the hem of his t-shirt, balling up a handful of cloth to press against the wound. The kid arches his back and gasps. “Sorry, but you’ve got some pretty major issues.”

“If it...uh...makes you feel better,” he pauses to cough, “I didn't...huh...honestly think my...ribs were broken...ah...until that one...huh...stabbed my lung.”

“No, that is the exact opposite of makin’ me feel better, Tinkerbell.” Jack shakes his head.

“Puh...please stop cah...calling me that,” the kid mutters, gasping softly when Jack starts trying to figure out how bad the damage is. He squeezes his eyes shut and bites his lip when Jack’s fingers brush over a deeply bruised spot.

“Sorry, kid, but I gotta see what's wrong.”

“I...huh...have at least...uh...one broken rib, a punctured lung, and...uh...a stab wound...lower left side. That's...heh...what's wrong.”

“Very funny. What's really wrong is you have a screwy sense of self preservation.” Jack chuckles in spite of everything.

“Would...huh...you rather...uh...I let him...heh...stab you?”

“Actually, yes. How many times have you already been out on medical leave since we’ve been partners? It’s my turn for some free vacation time. Stop stealing it all.” Jack knows most people can’t stand the way his coping mechanism is to dig out the dark humor. But it’s keeping Mac talking, awake, and alive.

“I...uh...that was...ugh...joke, right?”

“Yeah.” Jack finds it a little too easy sometimes to forget how broken Mac is. He hides it so well. “I’m not mad at you, really, I promise. And I’m sorry. For everything.” He tells himself this frantic rambling is just to keep Mac awake. _If he dies and I don’t make sure he knows I’m sorry I’ll never forgive myself._ Jack pushes that thought away. “I’m sorry I was such a jerk. I’m sorry I treated you so badly Matty felt like she had to betray your trust. For what it’s worth, she’s sorry too. But we just wanted to help. We wanted you to let us in and trust us. We’re your family now, Mac, and we just want to help.”

“You just..huh...called me Mac.”

“Well, that’s your name, isn’t it?” Jack smiles. “Seriously, man, I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you. Even help you dig through a dumpster to make whatever crazy thing you need help with next. But I reserve the right to complain about it the whole time, okay?”

Mac’s soft whimper stops him. “It h...uh...hurts, Jack.” He sounds like a frightened, wounded child. Jack doesn't even want to know how bad it must be, for him to say that.

“I know. I know it does. But you have to stay with me.” Jack grips his hand, fingers slick with blood. He pulls the kid against him, holding him close, even when his own legs go numb. “I'm not goin’ anywhere, Mac, so don’t you leave on me.”

“ ‘kay.” It’s barely a whisper, but Jack smiles anyway.


	15. Stairs+Family

Jack’s assigned three different probationary agents while Mac’s in recovery. One’s an immediate out; he tries to shoot three vamps his first night, none of whom were on their watchlist. The other two are good, one very good, but they’re all missing something. There are no crazy ideas that shouldn’t work but do, no random improvisation that results in things Jack’s not sure he wants to know how to use, and there’s a painful lack of, well, for lack of a better way to put it, fae-ness.

Jack actually misses that scrawny, quiet, inventive kid. While Mac’s still in the infirmary, Jack visits every day. Sometimes, the first few days, the kid never wakes up the whole time he sits there, but Jack doesn’t mind. He sits and talks to Mac, tells him stories of his own days as a rookie. He makes sure to save the really embarrassing ones for the times the kid’s just been given a new dose of painkillers; with any luck, Mac won’t remember them. Jack still feels obligated to tell them though.

He makes excuses to Bozer, the housemate, a full human who has no idea the nightlife exists and yet writes freakishly detailed movie scripts about vampires. He tells Boze that Mac’s on a long term collaboration with another think tank in Alaska, and that they get minimal wifi or cell signal and that’s why he’s not calling home. He thinks he made it convincing. Matty’s letters, mailed from Alaska by an agent in the Portland-based Midnight Agency who owed her some big favor, seal the deal.

Once the kid starts improving, Jack cuts his hours on patrol so that he can help with his rehab. Mac’s a stubborn little pain in the ass, and it seems like he’ll only listen to Jack when it comes to instructions. The poor P.T. assigned to him is about on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Jack can understand Mac’s unwillingness to cooperate and the way he just wants to get out of here. He’s been there. Which means he can talk the kid through the hard days.

“You have to slow down, Mac. You tear something open again, you gotta start over.”

“I have to get back in the field.” Mac’s panting, sweating, legs shaking, looking like he’s run five miles. The sad thing is this is after only about six rounds of climbing a set of four steps and coming back down.

Jack forcibly pushes the kid to sitting on one of the steps, then sits next to him. “Listen. I don’t know what’s goin’ on in that big brain of yours, but I’d be willing to bet it’s something along the lines of ‘if I’m not in the field I’m not useful and they’re going to get rid of me’.”

From the suddenly pained and almost ashamed look on Mac’s face, he’s hit the mark. Jack sighs and puts an arm around Mac's shoulders, feeling the rough, jagged scars on his back under the thin t-shirt. He'd noticed them when he'd grabbed the kid's shirt when Mac started to fall while walking across a room. Mac had finally broken down and told Jack the whole story, and Jack had wanted to go find Michaels, in whatever detention wing he was recovering in, and finish the job he started in the warehouse. He's also stopped wearing a belt around Mac, or swinging anything, even his keys, in his hand.

“Listen, kid, we’re never gonna get rid of you. Not even if you were permanently blind, or deaf, or anything. Not even if you got so hurt you never went back to the field a day in your life.”  Jack reaches for his hand and slips a paperclip into it. “You know how to fix a lot of stuff. You gotta start listening to the people who know how to fix you.”

Jack thinks in a few seconds either he or the kid or both of them are going to start crying, so instead he stands up and gives Mac a hand. “Now I think that’s enough stairs for the day, but there’s a resistance band over there with your name on it, so let’s get going.”

It’s not like there’s some magic transformation after that, like in movies. Mac still struggles, still has bad days. Jack still sees the fear of being useless in his face more often than he’d like. He keeps trying to work harder and longer than he should, pushing himself to his breaking point and past it. But at least Jack’s there to catch him when he inevitably falls. Often literally as well as metaphorically.

If it’s possible, Mac is a worse patient than Jack has ever been, and he makes a silent (because he’ll probably break it the next time he’s in rehab) promise to be a little nicer to the poor P.T.’s that get stuck dealing with him, because now he knows how they feel. He’ll be glad when this is over, because as great as bonding time with your partner is, Jack would prefer bonding over a Bruce Willis marathon and pizza, or a trip home to Texas, rather than over both being stubborn fools who are locked in a consistent battle of who’s going to give in and let the other one have their way first. And Jack is proud to say he wins more than half the time. Maybe 51 percent.

But every day, Mac opens up a little more. Even the days Jack feels like he's taking care of a teenager crossed with a shoe-chewing puppy are worth it when Mac's willing to sit and talk about something. One day, it's his mom. Once it's being loaned out, and he leaves out pretty much any details, but Jack can fill that in himself. A lot of times it's his dad, or his grandpa, or Bozer. Or his old team. The vicious overuse of their control of him, brutal beatings, horrific verbal abuse, and utter unconcern for his safety or health make Jack's blood boil. 

Mac tells him the warehouse convinced him Jack wasn't like the others. Because he didn't leave Mac to take care of himself. "I barely knew who you were, after Michaels...after he used my name," Mac had said, twisting the edge of his shirt in his hands. "But I knew you weren't him when you wouldn't let me die." And Jack hugs him and hopes the kid can't see the tears in his eyes, because Jack is not about to give him any kind of blackmail material for when they make it back in the field.

And Jack talks too. He tells Mac about his dad, and his horse Rocky, and the ranch back in Texas that he hasn't been back to in four years. He even tells Mac about his favorite fishing spot, one hidden away under a tree along the river where it's cool even at noon in the summer. Someday, he's going to take Mac there, and watch the fae kid run wild in those wide-open spaces. And maybe he'll even be able to fix that tractor that died on Jack the last time he was home.

It feels like a real partnership now, and Jack knows if they were a good team before, they're going to be fantastic now. 

Still, the day Mac shows up in the War Room, a little paler and thinner than he should be but smiling shyly, Jack’s not sure he’s ready. He still wants to keep the kid sidelined a little longer, but Mac insists (and for once, medical backs him up) that he’s fully recovered and ready for field ops again.

“And a good thing, too,” Matty says, pulling up a large file on the screen. “Michaels finally recovered enough to talk, and he wasn’t the only one with a psychotic plan. There’s a whole network of people across the state, even the country, who want to reveal the nightlife to the world. The intel he’s given us suggested that the Dawn, as they’re calling themselves, may have been behind the Coven Wars from the beginning.”

Jack’s actually glad Michaels survived, so he’ll get to spend the rest of what is hopefully a very long life in a small box in some hole in the ground Matty will be sure to throw away the key to.

Jack’s pretty sure Matty’s behind the fact that the entire Silver Blade agency went down for this, even though the director insisted he hadn’t known what his agents were doing.

“The LA nightlife community is no longer that big a secret, thanks to the Dawn. We're going to need a highly skilled team to deal with this new world. And you two are the beginning of it.” Matty gives both of them a rare large smile.

“You two, for a relatively new team that’s had very little actual field time,” Mac looks slightly guilty, “have brought in a record number of arrests. You’re possibly the best team the Phoenix has.” Jack looks over at Mac and holds out his hand. The kid responds with a tentative fist bump. It’s not the elaborate team handshake Jack and Matty and Patty used to have, but it’s a start.

“We’ll be adding on some team members, there’s a technical analyst who shows promise that I’m currently watching in probation, but for now, I’d like the two of you back on the streets. We need to find out more about the Dawn, and Mac, since you knew a few of their members, you’re our best bet at tracking them.”

Mac nods. “I know who they talked to, who they worked with. I remember the names.” Jack doesn’t miss the slight shudder. _All the people he was loaned to. He remembers every single one._

Matty’s voice and face soften. “You don’t need to do anything you’re not comfortable with. If you give us the names, I’ll personally track them down.”

“Get in line, Matty,” Jack runs a finger over the handle of his whip. When he comes face to face with any of the bastards who’ve hurt that kid, no matter what it is they did, they’re going to be sorry.

“I’m going to help.” Mac’s voice is a bit quivery, a mixture of fear and determination. _He’s going to watch them go down one by one. He’s going to get to see the people who hurt him finally end up where they belong, behind bars where they’ll never be able to touch him again. He’ll get some closure._ It’s not a solution, it will never be enough to unbreak what’s been shattered, but maybe it can help him heal.

Mac kneels and reaches for Matty, and she pulls him into a hug. He looks back at Jack and nods, and Jack joins the group hug. This feels right. Like home. Like family.


End file.
